


but home is just a room (full of my safest sounds)

by blueshirt



Category: Phandom/The Fantastic Foursome (YouTube RPF)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Dan needs a hug, M/M, Post-Break Up, someone hug him
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-01
Updated: 2015-11-01
Packaged: 2018-04-29 05:27:29
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 21,757
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5117243
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blueshirt/pseuds/blueshirt
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which things fall apart, and then back together. </p><p>Or, the one where they break up in 2012 and stumble across each other three years later. Featuring Dan as a radio show host and BBC presenter, and Phil as a weatherman on the Isle of Man.</p><p>Now available in Русский <a href="http://archiveofourown.org/works/7388347/chapters/16782364">here</a> and <a href="https://ficbook.net/readfic/4389143">here</a>.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into Русский available: [but home is just a room (full of my safest sounds)](https://archiveofourown.org/works/7388347) by [irni_mak](https://archiveofourown.org/users/irni_mak/pseuds/irni_mak)



> -Disclaimer: Okay, so I've been in somewhat of a moral quandary about posting this story all week, because it contains some discussions of sexuality and coming out, and even though this story is an obvious AU, it does follow parts of D&P's actual storyline. And idk, writing RPF is so weird sometimes because it's like creating a fictional version of real people. And the real people are still out there somewhere, being real people. So I want to make it extra, extra clear that this is just a fanfiction and that I am in no way, shape, or form trying to speculate about anyone's real life sexuality or relationships. Literally all for the sake of the plot. I just write this shit for the lulz and to cope with my own sexual identity crises lmao  
> -Title comes from 'Talk Me Down' by Troye Sivan, which I'm sure is going to be an overused story title v soon, but it's just...so perfect and good...go listen if you haven't already, for real.  
> -*disappears back into the void to continue contemplating the ethics of RPS*
> 
> -Also, a huge thank you to [Irni_Mak](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Irni_Mak/pseuds/Irni_Mak) for taking the time to translate this fic into Russian! You can read it here on [ao3](http://archiveofourown.org/works/7388347/chapters/16782364) or on [ficbook](https://ficbook.net/readfic/4389143) :)

_2009_

_Dan doesn’t want to leave._

_“It’s only for a few weeks,” Phil says as they stand in the Manchester train station, but he sounds as miserable as Dan feels. “Then we’ll get to go to the Halloween Gathering together.”_

_“I wish I could just stay,” Dan mumbles, because spending the weekend with Phil had been perfect and amazing, but there is still so much left unsaid between the two of them about what they are; about what their relationship is now that they’ve finally met in person. “Distance is stupid.”_

_“Skype me when you get home tonight?” Phil says. He looks nervous, studying Dan’s face carefully as though looking for clues._

_“Of course—” Dan’s words are cut off as Phil suddenly surges forward and kisses him, his lips soft and exploratory against Dan’s._

_"Sorry—is…was that okay?” Phil asks, because they’d kissed earlier in the weekend, once, but hadn’t talked about it._

_“Of course it was okay,” Dan scoffs, a little bubble of happiness rising up in his chest. He is the one who ducks back in for a kiss this time, losing himself in the way Phil’s lips move against his until the shrill whistle of the train breaks them apart._

_“Go,” Phil whispers against his mouth. Dan goes._

* * *

 2015      

Dan literally walks into a wall when he sees him.

“You okay, mate?” A friendly voice asks. Dan turns from where he is rubbing his forehead ( _that’s_ going to bruise) and picking up his scattered possessions on the cobblestone, and sees a blond guy around his age smiling down at him, completely unaware that Dan’s entire world has just come screeching to a halt.

“Yeah, fine,” Dan breathes, hardly sparing a glance for the man as his gaze automatically refocuses on the flatscreen TV in the shop across the way; the thing that had distracted him in the first place.

The man is staring down at him in concern, and it takes Dan a minute to realize that his fingers are sticky with blood from when he’d touched his temple.

“You sure, man? You’re bleeding,” the man says, bending down to help Dan pick up his water bottle and laptop bag and duffel bag.

“Yeah, it’s…head wounds bleed a lot,” Dan mumbles, still transfixed by the TV.

The man follows Dan’s gaze and his brow crinkles when he sees where Dan is looking. “Look, mate, I know they’re predicting storms, but that’s no reason to be alarmed. We’re perfectly safe on the isle.”

“Yeah, I just—just thought the weatherman looked like somebody I used to know, is all,” Dan croaks.

“Who, Phil? Yeah, he used to post videos on YouTube a few years ago before he moved out here, so he gets that a lot. Hey, wait…you’re that guy from the BBC, right? I’m Ben, nice to meet you.”

“Dan Howell,” Dan says, dazedly shaking Ben’s hand with his own non-bloody one. He is used to the random recognition; he gets it all the time in London, and when the BBC had asked him to help film a documentary on the Isle of Man he’d been expecting it here too. After all, anyone who has watched a red carpet awards show or listened to Radio 1 over the past three years has seen Dan Howell at one point or another. “Uh, how many people did you say live on this isle?” He clears his throat and blinks, forcing his eyes away from the grainy television broadcast, his stomach in his shoes.

Ben’s eyebrows draw together, but he looks amused. “Er—I didn’t say, actually, but there’s about 80,000. Feels much smaller than that, though—everyone knows each other around here.”

“Oh, good, good,” Dan says faintly, aware that his voice sounds a little high-pitched.

Ben’s face is carefully calculating, and Dan wonders if he has made the connection between Phil’s former YouTube career and Dan. “Well, welcome to Mann!” Is all he says, much to Dan’s relief. “You sure your head is okay?”

“What?” Dan asks, before remembering the fact that he had literally walked into a concrete wall not a minute earlier. “Oh, yeah. All good.” He flashes a thumbs-up, but then realizes his thumb is covered in blood and quickly grabs his duffel bag and ducks away with a nod.

He barely holds it together on the rest of his walk to the hotel and through the check-in process. By the time he makes it up to his BBC-sponsored suite, his hands shake as he fumbles with the key card and lets himself in, and after he washes his hands and cleans the small cut on his forehead, he immediately pours himself a stiff drink from the mini-bar and collapses into the chair out on the balcony, drawing in deep lungfuls of saltwater air and staring out at the stormy waves of the Irish Sea.

He’d been so pleased with himself for not getting queasy on the ferry ride over, only to find himself clinging white-knuckled to the arms of his chair and forcibly reminding himself to inhale and exhale not an hour later; seasick on dry land.

But then again, Phil has always been an entire ocean, and Dan has always felt tiny and overwhelmed standing on the shore beside him, trying not to be swept away.

* * *

_2010_

_**there is no bear on this island**_ **= <**

_It’s been hours since Dan had first seen the tweet, and he is still intermittently beaming like an idiot when his phone finally rings that night._

_“Thank god you answered,” is the first thing Phil says. “If you don’t hear from me ever again after this, it’s because the sheep have carried me off to live with them.”_

_“That bad?” Dan asks as he kicks off his trainers and flops back onto his bed. Something inside of his chest loosens as he sinks into his mattress, the sound of the April rain tapping against his window filling one ear; Phil’s voice filling the other._

_“I think there are about fifty sheep to every one person on this island. And that’s not even mentioning the fact that I think I’ve brought the average age of the Isle of Man population down about thirty years by showing up here.”_

_“Jeez, Phil, I hate to be the over-controlling boyfriend, but it sounds like you’re having a really wild time on holiday, and I’m not sure that I’m entirely comfortable with all of this,” Dan laughs. “I just feel like I don’t even_ know _you anymore.”_

_“You’re the worst,” Phil pouts. “Yes, wild times visiting my grandparents—I literally counted sheep as I was falling asleep last night. I think I was all the way in the hundreds before I passed out of sheer boredom. I want to make a vlog, but everyone will report my channel when they die of boredom.”_

_Dan weighs his next words on his tongue before he opens his mouth. “I miss you,” he says. These are the words he carries around with him each and every day; the words that fill up the empty space next to him in bed each night. Not just while Phil is gone on holiday to the Isle of Man, but always, while he is stuck at home near London and Phil up in Manchester._

_“Miss you, too,” Phil replies._

_There is a moment where Dan just closes his eyes and listens to the faint sound of Phil breathing over the line. It may sound creepy, but after several months of a long-distance relationship and several more pre-relationship months of daily Skype calls before they met in person and started dating, the sound of Phil’s steady, even breath echoing over his phone or through his headphones is one of the most familiar, comforting sounds in his universe._

_“It won’t always be like this, you know,” Phil says softly. “One day we won’t have to be apart all the time.”_

_“Yeah?” Dan murmurs, shifting into a more comfortable position, wrapping his arms around his favorite pillow and holding it close to his body._

_“I’ve actually always pictured myself moving to the Isle of Man one day down the line, actually. I’m just complaining about being here right now because you’re not with me.”_

_“I’ve never been—what’s it like there, anyway? Besides all the sheep; I’ve heard plenty about that.” Dan carefully lays his phone on his pillow so that he doesn’t have to hold it anymore._

_“It’s beautiful. Peaceful—you wouldn’t have any existential crises if you lived here. You know how the grass looks extra green at the beginning of spring each year? Well, the grass stays that green all the time here, except for in winter. Everything smells of the sea, and once you get outside the city, it feels like you could walk for days and days and never see another person, even though the whole isle is only fifteen miles wide.” Phil’s voice has taken on a low, storytelling tone, and Dan is already halfway to sleep._

_“Tell me about the house,” Dan mumbles into his pillow._

_“We’d—I mean…” Phil trails off uncertainly, and Dan’s chest jolts at the implication that they’d be buying this hypothetical house together. “I’d buy a house on the outskirts of the Douglas—that’s the main city—so that it would feel solitary, but not_ too _solitary, you know? It’d be a white house—most of the houses are white around here—and you’d be able to look at the sea from the back garden. The floors would be made of light wood, and there would be lots of windows and natural light—”_

_Dan drifts off to the sound of Phil’s mellow northern voice, imagining himself walking across light-wood floors in thick woolly socks that Phil’s grandmother would’ve knitted for him at some point. He can perfectly see an older version of Phil sitting at the kitchen table, perusing the paper and drinking his cup of morning coffee; the world white and snowy outside._

“Guess we won’t be able to go in to work today, with the weather and all,” _Future Phil grins at him across the table._

“Phil, we make YouTube videos for a living. I don’t think snowy weather renders our camera useless,” _Dan points out flatly, but he doesn’t say anything when Phil blatantly steals a handful of the cereal that Dan is pouring for himself._

“Nope. Too snowy for cameras—we’ll have to spend the day in bed. Mother Nature’s orders,” _Phil declares, obnoxiously crunching his cereal and suggestively wiggling his eyebrows._

“Stop trying to seduce me while eating stolen property,” _Dan says, but he very happily allows himself to be lured back into the warmth of their bed after breakfast, and their life together is so simple, in spite of all his big dreams about moving to London and becoming internet famous. And yet somehow this is everything he has ever wanted._

Someday.

* * *

Phil looks good.

It’s clear that life on the Isle suits him. It’s been nearly three years since Dan had last seen him in person, and to be quite honest, neither of them had exactly been at their best in that particular moment—on account of the shouting match and all the subsequent crying, naturally—but hey! That’s all in the past now, right? _Right?_ Dan nervously laughs to himself in his head, which is probably a pretty good indicator of how well this excursion to the hotel bar is going to go over if he’s been here for less than a minute and he’s already doing that.

Then again, when he’d come down to the lobby to get a drink, he’d been planning on having a nice change of scenery and de-stressing from a day of traveling and finding out that his ex-boyfriend is apparently living on the same tiny island that he is on. He definitely hadn’t counted on seeing said ex-boyfriend sitting at the bar and nursing a drink, obliviously scrolling through his phone and looking far too attractive for his own good.

“You okay, mate? Oh wait, it’s you again,” a familiar voice says. Dan turns to see the blond guy from earlier— _Brad? No, Ben_ —standing next to him.

He also belatedly realizes that he’d been nervously laughing _out loud_ and not internally as he had originally thought. (He probably should’ve foregone the second and third drinks from the minibar, to be honest).

“You know, I just saw someone lurking here and laughing kind of weirdly so I was concerned, but it’s just you. Dan Howell from the BBC, doing his thing,” Ben says cheerfully, and Dan gets the feeling that he is being teased.

“Are you just going to continue to appear whenever I do something embarrassing?” Dan asks.

“It’s a very small island, so statistically, yes,” Ben says. “Anyway, are you here to see Phil?”

“No! No, no, definitely not—” Dan exclaims at the same second that Ben calls “hey, Phil!” loudly enough that it would be impossible for Phil _not_ to hear, even across the crowded bar.

Phil lifts his gaze from his phone and his face lights up with a smile of recognition when he sees Ben, waving him over and motioning to the empty seat next to him. Behind Ben, Dan is desperately melting into the shadows, carefully watching Phil’s face and waiting for the minute that he realizes—

But no, Phil hasn’t seen him. He can just turn around and go back up to his room and pretend that none of this ever happened. Dan feels a gut-deep mixture of relief tinged with something else—it’s not like he _wants_ Phil to see him and for the horrible hey-remember-the-time-we-dated-for-three-years? thing to inevitably come up, but…a small part of him can admit that he’s missed that smile; that he remembers when it was just for him.

Unfortunately, sentimentally reminiscing on his past costs him his opportunity to escape. Before he can slip away, Ben’s fingers have closed around his wrist, and he is being forcibly pulled along towards Phil at the bar.

“Let go!” Dan hisses, trying not to attract any undue attention from Phil. “God, why are your fingers so strong?”

“It’s a gift,” Ben responds blithely, not responding at all to Dan’s desperate attempts to wrench his hand away. “A sheep tried to attack me once as a child, so I punched it in the face. I’ve been this way ever since. Hi, Phil!”

Phil slides down from his seat to stand and hold his hand out to Ben in greeting and _oh god Dan is going to puke why is this happening—_

“Hey, Ben—”

And everything just. Stops.

Dan can literally see the words die on Phil’s tongue when Phil notices him standing there.

“Dan,” Phil says. His voice sounds faint and distant, but Dan can’t tell if that’s his own brain trying to process what is happening, or if Phil had actually sounded that way when he’d spoken.

“Phil,” he chokes out in response.

And they just keep staring at each other. Phil has to look up slightly to meet Dan’s gaze now, which is brand new. Other things aren’t—Phil is wearing plaid, for one, and he’s currently doing his weird claw-hand thing in the pocket of his jeans, a sure sign of how uncomfortable he is with the situation. The long, pale line of Phil’s throat is exactly the same, but Dan had forgotten about the green hue in Phil’s eyes; how they shifted between different shades of sea-glass with changes in the light.

“Well, don’t hold back on your catching up on _my_ account,” Ben interjects, grinning between the two of them.

“Shut up,” he and Phil say in perfect, exasperated unison, before looking at each other, startled.

“I actually already regret reuniting the two of you,” Ben grumbles sourly. “I need a drink.” He heads to the bar, leaving Dan and Phil silently standing by the small table for an infinitely long moment. Dan furiously wracks his brain for an innocuous topic of conversation; opens his mouth three times and then shuts it each time.

“Well, we could sit down, I guess. Might as well be comfortable while we awkwardly stare at each other,” Phil says with a half-grin. He seems to have recovered well from his initial shock (at least he hasn’t thrown a drink in Dan’s face or demanded that Dan catch the next ferry off the island, both of which would be fairly reasonable responses to the situation), but Dan—who had known that this whole thing was a possibility since the weather broadcast this afternoon— _cannot stop staring._ At the new laugh-lines that he can see beginning to form around Phil’s eyes. At the strong line of his jaw and the sharper definition of his cheekbones. At the way his shoulders fill out his shirt.

Phil has aged well over the past few years—it’s not that he’s changed very much; it’s just that he’s gracefully eased into his facial features. He wonders what Phil sees when he looks at Dan—if their new height difference unnerves him; if he likes the way that Dan keeps his hair more closely-cropped nowadays. What he thinks about the fact that Dan’s own shoulders have broadened considerably since 2012.

“Phil, look, I didn’t—” Dan nervously runs a hand through his fringe. “I didn’t come here to bother you or to try and—try and do _anything,_ really. I’m here for work and we’ll only be filming for a week—two weeks, tops, and then I’ll be gone. I can stay away from you if that’s what you want. I can just go back up to my hotel room right now and we can pretend that none of this ever happened—”

Phil pushes a chair in Dan’s direction and takes a seat back on his own barstool. “The BBC must have a really good content editor if you ramble like this behind the scenes of all your interviews,” he laughs.

“You watch my interviews?” Dan asks, so transfixed by the idea that he takes a seat almost without even realizing.

“Contrary to popular belief, we _do_ have internet here,” Phil says lightly. He’s always been hard to read—an open book when it comes to interacting with other people; genuinely warm and kind, but on the things that really matter, he’s a brick wall.

(Dan remembers when he’d been allowed on the other side of that wall.)

“That’s not what I meant,” Dan says, surprising himself with his own boldness. “You seriously watch my interviews?”

“Look, I’m not going to avoid the entirety of the BBC just because my ex works there,” Phil says. “I work in the news industry now; it’s inevitable that I hear your name thrown around, Dan. But I’m professional about it.” He shrugs, unconcerned, as though this professionalism doesn’t cost him much; as though periodically watching Dan’s interviews or hearing his voice on the radio doesn’t bother him at all, when Dan had literally walked into a wall earlier simply upon seeing Phil doing the weather report. It stings a little, the fact that he is so much more affected by Phil’s presence than Phil is affected by his.

“I saw your weather report earlier,” Dan changes the subject, throwing a tentative smile in Phil’s direction. “That’s brilliant. I remember you saying that it was always your dream as a kid to be a weatherman.”

“Thanks,” Phil says, smiling back. He has this unique way of accepting compliments that Dan has always admired: he doesn’t try to deflect or downplay his accomplishments. He just accepts it.

Ben returns then, slipping into the seat next to Phil and distributing three beers around the table. It’s clear that he and Phil are very close—they sit with their shoulders casually pressed together and navigate around one another with practiced ease, and Dan can’t help but wonder what their relationship is. Not that he has any right to wonder about if Phil is single or not, but still.

“So, Dan, what brings you into town?” Ben asks when it becomes clear that Dan and Phil are just going to continue to stare at one another in slight disbelief unless a conversation is initiated. “We only have one radio station here that mostly plays pre-World War II hits, so I’m guessing it’s not Radio 1-related. And we have approximately zero celebrities, so it’s probably not that either.”

“I’m filming a documentary with the BBC about life in the British Isles,” Dan says, glad to have a safe topic to discuss. He can talk about his work for days. “There’s a couple of other presenters working on it, and we all got assigned different places to travel to and cover. And I got Mann.”

“Funny how that worked out,” Phil says.

Dan watches Phil’s hands fidget with his pint of beer—hands that had wiped away Dan’s tears when he’d decided to drop out of uni. Fingers that had opened him up that first time they’d had sex at Phil’s parents’ house in Manchester all those years ago, so carefully and tenderly. Arms that had held him through the night countless times in their tiny Manchester flat, their first and only home together.

“Yeah,” he murmurs, taking a long sip of his own beer. “Funny.”

* * *

_2011_

_“Jesus, Phil, if you repack that suitcase one more time the zipper isn’t going to fall off—it’s actually going to_ jump off _in protest of your abuse and go find other zippers to unionize with. You’re only going for a long weekend—surely you’ve got everything you need in there? For yourself and for a small army?” Dan is lounging on Phil’s bed and unhelpfully commentating as Phil checks his luggage for the thirty billionth time in the past hour._

_“Hilarious,” Phil mumbles distractedly, refolding several t-shirts—why anybody needs to bring 7 t-shirts with them for one weekend is beyond Dan’s comprehension—“I just want to make sure I have plenty of extra stuff this year so that I don’t end up dying of boredom again. And you can silently judge me for packing so many t-shirts—yes, I’m not blind, I see you rolling your eyes—but I’ll have you know that a sheep ate two of my shirts last time I stayed at my grandparents. It never hurts to be prepared.”_

_“Well, don’t take **all** your belongings. It feels like you’re moving out and leaving me here to wallow in solitude forever,” Dan says lightly, but they both know he means it. Dan doesn’t do well with spending long periods stuck at home alone—especially after he and Phil had had to do the long-distance thing in 2009 and 2010. Now that they actually live together, he likes it even less when Phil leaves him, because it’s a reminder of all that time he spent being lonely. _

_“You could come with, you know,” Phil says, and he carefully avoids Dan’s gaze, but his hands have paused in their folding motions._

_Phil has hinted at this a couple of times over the past few months, and each time, it has filled Dan’s stomach with the same deep, instant panic. He hasn’t quite labelled the reason **why** he feels so alarmed at the thought of tagging along for Lester family time, but it definitely has something to do with everything that’s been happening with their YouTube careers recently. _

_“I need to edit my new video this weekend, but maybe next time,” Dan says with a disingenuous half-smile. They both know he doesn’t mean it, and he can see Phil’s shoulders grow stiff._

_Phil sighs heavily and puts down the t-shirt he’s folding._

_And the thing is—a career as a YouTuber is all that Dan has ever wanted since he first found YouTube. But now that it’s actually_ happening _—now that his subscribers are creeping up into the hundred thousands and companies are starting to ask him to support their brands in his videos and his viewers are coming up to him on the street for pictures and hugs—it’s a lot more difficult than he’d imagined it would be._

_Because now that people are interested in his videos, they’re also interested in every single other little facet of his life. People are digging up old MySpace photos and Formspring answers and even stealing pictures from his personal Facebook. Nothing in his life or his past feels safe or private anymore, and his relationship with Phil is one of the only things that is just ‘his’—that is just between the two of them, just ‘theirs’._

_And even that isn’t safe or private anymore, because fans have started shipping the two of them together; have been writing fanfictions and looking for proof that the two of them are together. And Dan wants to protect their relationship from all that._

_“Sorry,” Dan adds, his voice small as he picks at a loose thread on Phil’s comforter. “I just…I feel like we’re always being watched by fans nowadays when we go out together. I don’t want to add fuel to the fire by going on vacation with your family, you know? Because someone will see and post about it, and then everyone will know.”_

_The tension doesn’t leave Phil’s shoulders, and Dan has a feeling he’s just made everything much worse with his honesty._

_“Would that really be the worst thing?” Phil asks, and Dan can hear the hurt and frustration in his voice. “It’s just Isle of Man, Dan, there’s barely anybody our age around who’d recognize us—and if they did, who cares? We’ve been friends for two years; we can go on holiday together. Besides, you’ve met most of my family already—this time it would just be as my boyfriend.”_

_“Of course it wouldn’t be the worst thing! It’s not like I’m embarrassed by you or something,” Dan says quickly. It’s just…Phil’s family is different than his. It’s true—he’s met Phil’s parents and Martyn before, but that had been right when they’d first started dating and it had been too soon to say anything about their relationship to anyone. But they’ve been together for nearly two years now and he completely understands Phil wanting to include Dan in his family time._

_The thing is, though...Phil is just as private as Dan is about many things, if not more—his personal relationships, his sexuality—he doesn’t think the viewers deserve to know any of that unless he chooses to share it with them. But with his family, he’s always been a wide-open book._

_And Dan hasn’t. It’s been two years, but he still hasn’t told his parents that he and Phil are dating, and he **knows** that it bothers Phil. It’s not that he loves his family any less than Phil loves his, it’s just...different. And Dan is pretty sure his parents already don’t approve of him living with Phil as a friend, since Phil is the one who ‘got him into that YouTube thing’ and ‘convinced him to drop out of uni’.   
_

_“I’m just…not ready, Phil,” he whispers, suddenly incredibly frustrated with himself and his stupid hang-ups. He picks up the t-shirt that Phil had stopped folding and holds it, just to give his hands something to do. He hates when he and Phil disagree._

_He can visibly see the fight go out of Phil. “I’m sorry,” Phil says, sitting down next to him on the bed. “You’re right; I shouldn’t push you to do things you’re not ready for.”_

_“But I_ should _be ready by now!” He blurts out._

_“There’s no timeline for coming out,” Phil says firmly. “You’ll get there when you’re ready.”_

_“What if I never do?” Dan asks softly._

_Phil pauses for a long moment. “You will,” he promises, but when he leaves to catch his train, he hugs Dan extra tightly, as though he’s afraid Dan will just…disappear into the ether before he comes back._

_He doesn’t kiss Dan goodbye, though, and Dan isn’t sure if they’re in a fight or not. It’s a shitty feeling, and he immediately returns to Phil’s room after Phil is gone and crawls into Phil’s bed, reassured by the familiar smell of Phil’s sheets. He falls asleep clutching the t-shirt that Phil had put down and never finished folding. It feels like a metaphor for something, but Dan doesn’t quite know what._

* * *

Dan unsuccessfully throws himself into his work the next day.

His cameramen (two of his BBC coworkers, Alistair and Aled) arrive on the ferry early in the morning. He walks down to the marina to pick them up as the sun comes up, and they stop for a coffee and immediately start unpacking the filming equipment.

If Alistair and Aled are confused by Dan suddenly developing a work ethic (he’s fondly known at the BBC as ‘that internet guy who sits on his laptop a lot and periodically interviews people and does radio stuff’), they don’t say anything.

The BBC had been quite vague about the assignment—they’re simply trusting their presenters to head out for a week or two and film some content that they feel accurately represents the isle in question, and then the editors will cobble everything together as they see fit. This openness gives them a lot of wiggle room, but also makes it hard to know where to begin, so Dan decides that they should just hit the streets and start interviewing people.

Unfortunately, he hadn’t accounted for the elderly population of Mann being out in full force at 7:30 AM, and for all of them to desperately want to share their two cents with the world about various civic topics such as: the economy (‘credit cards are evil and young people are too irresponsible nowadays’), the dangers of listening to modern musical artists, such as Kanye West (frankly offensive, in Dan’s very unbiased opinion), and Dan himself (‘if you want to come over for supper, just say the word! I’ve got three very eligible granddaughters who would love a tall, dark man like you…I wouldn’t mind one myself, if you’ve got an eligible grandfather! Ha, but no, really, how old is your grandfather? Is he as tall as you?’).

By 10 o’clock, Alistair shakes his head and turns off the camera. “We can’t use any of this footage—none of it’s relevant, and you keep looking into the camera like you’re on ‘The Office’ in every single shot.”

“Okay, so clearly heading to the streets first thing was a bad idea,” Dan says somewhat desperately. “But it’ll be fine; we’ll reassess after lunch and come up with a plan and—hey, where are you going?”

“We’re taking a smoke break,” Aled says. “The closer they come, the higher my blood pressure gets.”

“Smoking’s not going to help your blood pressure,” Dan calls after them, but all he gets is a raised middle finger from Aled in response. He has a feeling that he’s not going to see either of them for a while.

“Where are the camera people going?” An elderly woman wielding a dangerous-looking umbrella asks, looking downright murderous over losing her opportunity to be filmed. Several other people clamor closer and Dan starts feeling a bit claustrophobic.

“Uh…the camera is still rolling, so you can just stand in front of it and say whatever it is you want to say,” Dan announces as the inspiration strikes him. “They went to…check the isle’s wifi particles.”

“Ah, makes perfect sense,” Umbrella Lady says sweetly, apparently appeased by the blatant falsehood. Dan ducks to avoid her umbrella, which she swings as she darts away to get in line for the camera, and as he does, he spots Ben approaching from down the street, showcasing his uncanny talent for finding Dan in strange situations. Ben stops short, takes in the scene—Dan surrounded by a crowd of elderly people and looking terrified, even though he stands a full head taller than all of them—and he starts laughing.

 _“Help me,”_ Dan mouths, but Ben just waves cheerfully, takes out his phone with a smirk, and walks away. Traitor.

“There’s too many wifi particles in our atmosphere nowadays! How do we know the wifi particles aren’t getting in our food?” Shouts a man who has obviously read one too many articles about conspiracy theories.

“Ask the camera, not me,” Dan says, motioning to the non-functional video equipment. “Now’s your chance to tell the world your story.”

It helps a little bit, because now more of the small crowd is queueing up to have their turn in front of the camera, but Dan is still surrounded by people trying to talk to him and ask him questions, and he’s honestly feeling thoroughly overwhelmed.

He’s trying to explain to an elderly woman named Edith that he can’t guarantee that the BBC will use their interviews when he hears a familiar someone clear their throat behind him.

“Excuse me, Edith,” Phil says. “But I need to borrow Dan for a few minutes. He already asked to interview me.”

“That’s not fair!” Someone shouts. “Why does he get priority?”

“Oh my actual god,” Dan mutters, allowing Phil to drag him away from the crowd.

Phil laughs. “Having fun yet?”

“Thanks for saving me,” Dan says once they’re a good distance away from the huddled group. “Ben saw me dying and he just left me.”

Phil exhales loudly. “Well, that explains that. I got a text from him just a few minutes ago saying that you were in trouble on Main Street and that I should go help you.”

“Why didn’t he just help me?” Dan asks, puzzled.

“Because he doesn’t know how to mind his own business and not meddle in things,” Phil mutters, almost under his breath, and Dan doesn’t quite know what that means, but the crowd has not-very-subtly shuffled closer to the two of them, obviously trying to eavesdrop.

“Wow, you’ve got quite the fan club here,” Phil laughs as they edge away from the group again. “Famous Dan Howell from the BBC.”

“No,” Dan says, something uncomfortable twisting in his stomach. “Just Dan Howell.” It suddenly feels very important that Phil should understand this; that Phil should know that Dan doesn’t think of himself as some celebrity because of his presenting work or because people recognize him now. That just because time has gone by and Dan doesn’t necessarily look the same or act the same, that doesn’t mean he isn’t still the same Dan beneath it all.

“What about Danisnotonfire? Is he still in there?” Phil says, lightly rapping on the side of Dan’s forehead with his knuckles.

Dan knows Phil is just trying to tease him, but his response still rings heavy with truth. “I don’t know if I ever really was Danisnotonfire in the first place, or if I was just pretending to be him to get where I thought I wanted to be.”

Phil blinks at him and starts laughing, puffs of his breath quickly dissolving into the chilly air. “Sorry, sorry,” he says. “I’m not laughing at your answer…but come on, that’s way too deep of a thing to be saying at…11 AM on a Thursday. You need a coffee,” Phil says, glancing at the crowd of elderly people who are still waiting uncomfortably close by to where they are standing. They seem to have settled in for the long haul—Dan spots three women knitting, and two men have pulled out a chess board and set it up on a tree stump. “I mean, HEY, DAN, LET’S GO GET SOME COFFEE!” Phil says loudly.

The crowd instantly begins muttering darkly amongst themselves, and Dan can sense that a revolt is at hand.

“SOUNDS EXTREMELY VITAL AND NECESSARY THAT WE LEAVE TO GO DO THAT,” Dan exclaims back, hastily shoving the cameras into their respective bags. Phil collects all the sound equipment, and then they dart away down the street, Dan practically choking on his laughter.

He feels a little giddy, almost, by the time they arrive at a local coffee shop. As soon as they actually get their drinks and sit down, however, reality comes crashing back down on Dan’s shoulders. As easy as it had been to briefly slip back into their dynamic of the past, the fact remains that the Phil who sits across from him at this table is essentially a stranger in many ways. He doesn’t know how Phil came to move here or how he became a weatherman. He doesn’t know if Phil is single, or if he’s dating Ben, or if he’s seeing somebody else altogether. Most of all, he doesn’t know why on earth Phil is being so nice to him.

“So,” he blurts out. “I always wondered; what made you stop doing YouTube? I still see loads of fans talking about you on Twitter and Tumblr; wondering if you’ll ever come back.”

Phil shrugs. “I think I stopped for the same reason you did.”

Which is interesting, because Dan had continued to make videos through 2013 for the sake of job security when his career at the BBC was just beginning and still on the rocks, even though he’d felt uninspired and frustrated the entire year. The official story he’d left fans with when he’d stopped making YouTube content was that he was just too busy with his full-time work at the BBC. Phil, however, had virtually dropped off the map immediately following their break-up in 2012.

“I stopped because I got too busy with the BBC,” Dan says, and Phil gives him this look like he just _knows_ that that’s bullshit.

“And I stopped because it stopped being fun and started feeling like work,” Phil returns, because he’s always been more honest with himself than Dan has. “My heart just wasn’t in it anymore.”

And _ouch,_ Dan can hear the implied message there: _my heart wasn’t in it anymore, because you broke it when you left._

“But that’s all in the past now, right?” Phil says with a tight smile. “We’ve both moved on to different dreams. I’ve got my meteorology degree, and you’ve got your presenting work.”

 _You were my first dream,_ Dan wants to say. Instead he just says, “I’m sorry,” even though he knows it’s too late for that; that showing up three years later and throwing out an apology over coffee isn’t going to do shit or mean shit.

“No point in being sorry now, is there?” Phil shrugs, unbothered.

And something small and tentative that had been taking root in Dan’s chest since he’d stepped off the ferry and seen that weather report quietly dies.

Because he can admit to himself now that he’d had some stupid vision of fixing things between the two of them; that he’d seen this as some sort of cosmically fated opportunity to make amends for his earlier mistakes. That he’d foolishly fantasized over the idea of the two of them becoming friends again and slipping back into each other’s lives last night as he’d laid awake in his uncomfortable hotel bed, slightly tipsy and unable to get the sweep of Phil’s dark eyelashes out of his head.

But that had been stupid, because Phil has clearly made his peace with all the things that Dan had broken between them. Phil had loved him once, and that had been a precious thing. But Dan can’t get it back, now that it’s been tarnished and worn away by the years and distance between them.

Phil has obviously moved on—he has a job that he genuinely seems to love, and he has Ben now, and probably loads of other friends on the island. He’s sitting here and drinking coffee with Dan right now because that’s what mature adults _do—_ they exchange pleasantries with their exes and keep moving forward with their lives.

“For the record, Ben, I can see you lurking over there,” Phil calls suddenly, and then Ben is unashamedly popping out from around the corner, clutching his own cup of coffee.

“I never lurk, I merely wait for an opportune moment to reveal myself,” Ben says loftily.

“There was an opportune moment earlier where you could’ve revealed yourself to all the elderly people who were trying to mob me,” Dan says pointedly.

“Reveal myself to the elderly? Why, Daniel, I didn’t know you were into public indecency! What kind of video are you here to film, exactly?”

“Hilarious,” Dan says flatly.

“Well, we all have to invent our own fun to get through the day around here. And speaking of fun—”

“No,” Phil interjects. “Dan, you’re not obligated to come. I mean, you can if you want, but don’t let him—”

“ _—Phil_ is having a house party tomorrow,” Ben says over Phil. “And we would love it if you could attend.”

“Er, I might be—”

“Busy? With what?” Ben calls his bluff. “At the very least it would be a good networking opportunity. Meet some of Mann’s young people; find some real interview subjects.”

Which Dan can’t deny would be incredibly helpful.

“You should come, Dan,” Phil says, fiddling with his coffee cup and not meeting Dan’s gaze. “It’ll be just like old times.” Dan wonders if he is also thinking about all the YouTube gatherings they’d gone to back in 2009; all the house parties they’d attended in Manchester in 2010 and 2011 where they’d inevitably ended up making out in some dark corner, unable to keep their hands off each other.

“Yeah, okay,” he hears himself say, even though his internal monologue is shouting ‘bad idea! Bad idea!’, because if there’s anything he’s learned over the past three years, it’s that the past never really stays in the past.

* * *

_2012_

_“So you **honestly** expect that we’ll just be able to pick up and move to London and everything will be sunshine and rainbows, just like that? We have no money! We’ve hardly properly talked to each other in months, Dan! That’s not what this relationship needs!” Phil never yells, but his voice is almost at that point for the first time Dan can remember. That’s pretty much a summary of 2012 thus far: a lot of loud, tense voices, and a lot of long, cold silences. _

_But their lease is going to be up next month, and Dan can’t put this off any longer. They are standing in Phil’s room, and Dan realizes that he can’t remember the last time he’d slept in here, or the last time he’d wandered in just because he wanted to share some stupid web comic or video with Phil; just because Phil was in here and Dan wanted to be close to him._

_“Phil,” he says. He wonders how they got to this point—when they stopped kissing each other goodnight, when they’d gone from never being able to keep their hands to themselves to not touching for days at a time. It had happened in between so many other things—fans finding and harassing Dan’s little brother, incredibly intense speculation about his and Phil’s relationship from the sudden **millions** of people watching their videos—quiet and gradual. “I already sent in a demo to Radio 1. They genuinely seem interested in us—it could be such a good opportunity! Why are you being so stubborn about this?!” He’s trying to be level-headed, but his voice rises in frustration by the end of the statement; because they’ve been rehashing this same argument for weeks now and they’re not getting anywhere. _

_“I’m being stubborn about it because I care about making this relationship work, unlike you—”_

_“That is so unfair! I moved to Manchester to be with you! You’re the most important person in my life; how can you **say** that?” Dan wants to pull his hair out with the force of wanting to make Phil just **understand**_.

_“Oh, I don’t know…maybe because you’re always ranting about how the idea of us being in a relationship is 'absurd’ on tumblr and going on in your liveshows about how all the fans are so stupid for thinking that we actually could be together?” Phil’s voice isn’t loud anymore. Instead it’s deadly quiet and deadly serious and Dan has a terrible feeling that this is something Phil has been thinking for months without saying; that as Dan has been so wrapped up in trying to get them a job at the radio in London, stuck in the mentality of hide, hide, hide anything that could hint at a relationship from fans, Phil has slowly been drifting further and further in the opposite direction of where Dan’s path is leading him._

_“I promised myself I’d never pressure you to come out, and I can handle keeping our relationship private—but for fuck’s sake, Dan, I don’t want to be with someone who is ashamed of loving me. I deserve more than that. I know I do.”_

_Dan feels like all the air has been punched out of his lungs. “I’m not **ashamed** of you,” he says, his eyes prickling traitorously. He’d love nothing more than to walk down the street holding Phil’s hand; to wrap an arm around Phil’s waist when they stand with their friends at YouTube events, but…it’s just not that simple._

_“Aren’t you, though?” Phil asks, and the worst part is that he doesn’t even sound angry anymore. Just accepting. “You won’t come and meet my family. You’re so obsessed with the idea of getting millions more subscribers and a job where you can become famous, because clearly this relationship isn’t enough; because clearly you’re still missing something, and you’ve decided it’s something I can’t give you.”_

_“What, so because I want to have a career and a relationship simultaneously, I’m some kind of homewrecker?” Dan snaps, arms crossed over his chest, automatically defensive in the face of the truth that lies beneath Phil’s words._

_“I’m just saying, moving to London is only going to make things worse between us—you think you feel pressured by the viewers now? Wait til we’re in the big city and people are taking pictures of us every time we go out. YouTube isn’t everything, you know—”_

_And Dan must have a self-destructive streak ingrained in his DNA somewhere, because he always does this thing where he sabotages himself over the things that matter the most. Like when he’d been 17 and he’d finally been old enough to pursue his dreams of acting in real productions, and instead he’d chosen to quit acting and go drinking in the woods with his classmates, many of whom were on a fast track to nowhere._

_This is the only reason he can think of to explain the terrible words that spill out of his mouth next._

_“You’re just jealous because I have nearly twice as many subscribers as you.”_

_Even as he’s saying it, he knows he’s gone way too far, because it goes against every single rule in their relationship, spoken and unspoken, for Dan to use that fact as ammo against Phil in a fight._

_Phil recoils as though he’s been slapped. “What happened to you?” He asks, as though he doesn't even recognize Dan anymore. "This relationship used to be about you and me, not about YouTube and subscriber counts and fame, Dan."_

_And his eyes look a little watery and **holy shit,** Dan is the worst person ever because he’s made Phil cry, and Phil really isn’t a cry-er, and all Dan wants to do is to weep against Phil’s neck and whisper apologies into his skin until Phil believes him and forgives him and they can just start over again, but there is too much distance between where they are standing, and Dan doesn’t know how to bridge that gap anymore._

_“You’ve changed,” Phil says softly, and this is how it ends between them, silence in a Manchester bedroom._

_Because it **is** ending between them. Because Dan is the type of person who goes drinking in the park instead of auditioning for roles. Because there’s a reason that Dan never became an actor, and it’s this:_

_“I’m moving to London,” he says firmly, and he slams the door behind him when he leaves the apartment._

_Even as he’s crying in the lift on the way down, praying that Phil will come running after him, he knows it’s not going to happen. Because if Dan is the type to drink in the park, Phil is the type to stay in the safety and comfort of home. Dan is the type to slam the door and go running off into the rain, but Phil’s not the type to chase after._

* * *

_Less than a month later, Dan is moving in to his own flat in London._

_His parents had wanted to come along for the health inspection before Dan moved in, but Dan had adamantly waved them off, knowing that they’d never let him live in a place as shitty as this once they saw it. He has absolutely no money, so it’s a tiny studio that is honestly even worse than his uni accommodation._

_There’s no furniture and Dan can’t afford anything that’s not from Poundland. He lays his mattress on the dubiously-stained floor as far away from the door as possible in case of intruders, and neatly stacks his clothes in plastic tubs because he can’t afford a wardrobe. Fortunately it’s still summer, so he doesn’t have to worry about paying for heat, but if the BBC doesn’t accept his radio show proposal by winter, he’s going to be in trouble._

_In the meantime, he has to subsist on YouTube revenue, so once he’s run out of ways to stall any further, he opens his laptop and clicks open his document of video ideas._

_It’s a strangely defining moment in his life—he will always vaguely remember that the clock reads 11:38 PM when this happens—and he finds himself suddenly bursting into tears and bawling his eyes out for the first time since he’d slammed the door behind him in Manchester, because the very first thing in his video ideas document is the list of questions he’d begun collecting for PINOF 4, and there isn’t going to **be** a PINOF 4 anymore, and he **hates** this shitty flat because he knows that he and Phil would’ve loved it if they’d moved in here together; that they would’ve made a home together in spite of the lack of money and furniture; that they would’ve shared this crappy mattress on this crappy floor and been stupidly, uncomplicatedly happy, at least just for a minute before real life came crashing back down around them. _

_In the duffle bag near his feet is a t-shirt of Phil’s that had gotten mixed in with his own things somehow. It’s the same goddamn shirt that he’d fallen asleep holding last year when Phil had been packing to go to Mann and they’d had that weird sort-of-argument. He’s at a point now where he can recognize that that moment had been the beginning of the end._

_He has a good cry, clutching the t-shirt like a drowning man clinging to a life preserver. And then he throws the shirt out._

_There’s definitely a metaphor there this time._

* * *

 

Dan had _genuinely_ started off with no intention of getting drunk at the house party.

He’d even brought a notebook with so that he could network with people and take down their contact info and even jot down some quick interview notes if it got that far. He’d had it all planned out: he’d have one social drink, mingle with people, set up some interviews, and then duck out early like the truly professional journalist that he is.

Naturally that all goes straight out the window when he rings the buzzer for Phil’s flat and Ben answers the door, shirtless and wet-haired, clearly fresh out of the shower.

“Oh, hey, Dan. You’re an hour early,” Ben says cheerfully, which—there goes his image as a cool professional. Now he’s just the weirdly overeager guy who’s showed up to the party while the hosts are still getting dressed.

“Uh, I can come back later if you want—” Dan offers, shuffling his feet by the front door.

“Don’t be stupid, this just gives us more time to pregame before people show up,” Ben says brightly, pulling him inside and shutting the door so that Dan has no real choice but to stay. “I think Phil’s still in the shower, but make yourself at home. You want a beer?”

And Dan looks around at Phil’s (and Ben’s?) small flat and thinks about the fact that there is only one queen size bed in the single bedroom he can see from where he is standing in the lounge. He thinks about the fact that Ben and Phil may have very well just been in the shower together before he’d arrived.

“Yeah, I’ll have a beer,” he says, and something in his tone makes Ben stop and grin at him.

“Sounds like you need something a little stronger, actually, mate,” Ben says, and Dan doesn’t protest when he takes out a bottle of rum and makes Dan a drink with a _very_ generous jack to coke ratio. He passes it to Dan before heading to the bedroom to grab himself a shirt.

Dan walks around the small lounge as he waits, poking at all the knick-knacks and inspecting the pictures. Phil’s always been somewhat of a packrat, so it’s surprising that Dan doesn’t recognize most of the assorted memorabilia that he has displayed. Besides the Buffy stuff—Phil would sooner cut off his arms than remove Buffy from his life—there is almost nothing left over from their flat in Manchester.

It stings a little to see pictures of Martyn and Phil’s parents and grandparents and Ben and lots of other people and memories he doesn’t recognize on Phil’s walls. Then again, if Phil and Ben share this flat, it makes sense that Phil’s time with Dan wouldn’t be featured prominently on its walls.

And to be fair, Dan doesn’t exactly have a shrine to his relationship with Phil set up in his London flat, either. He still has all the important photos of Phil tucked away in the Incredibly Secret Box that sits on his nightstand, though, which is probably a little pathetic, now that he thinks about it. Most of the pictures aren’t even important, anyway—just mundane little memories from the years they’d spent together that he couldn’t make himself throw away—Halloween pictures from their first YouTuber gathering right after they’d met, Dan looking wide-eyed and so, so young; random water-smudged outtakes from their Jamaica holiday; candid shots of Phil through the years, looking out the window on the train, editing videos, passed out on the couch after an all-night gaming session—he’d kept it all.

So maybe he’s a little bit of an _emotional_ packrat—sue him. It’s not like anyone is in his room or his bed often enough to look through the box and see that he’s hoarding the old pictures, which—actually, come to think of it, is probably even more pathetic than keeping those pictures in the first place; the fact that he hasn’t been in anything even _close_ to resembling a relationship for three years now. Phil has Ben, and Dan has nobody. He takes several long pulls of his drink, enjoying the way that the rum burns down his throat and warms his stomach.

“Wow, you got through that quickly. Another?” Ben says when he returns, fully-clothed.

It’s a bad idea. Terrible, in fact. “Yeah, sure,” Dan says, holding out his empty glass and allowing Ben to make him a new drink with an even stronger jack to coke ratio.

Things go downhill after that, unsurprisingly.

Phil looks devastatingly good after his shower, and when he leans casually against the doorframe of the bedroom and grins easily at Dan, it sends a low buzz of arousal and _want, want, need_ thrumming under the surface of his skin. Too bad he doesn’t have the right to look at Phil like that anymore. Too bad Ben is so nice and funny. He can’t even hate the guy, which makes everything that much worse.

They don’t have much time to talk before people begin arriving, filtering through the front door with six-packs of beer and thick Mann accents. Dan isn’t normally a huge fan of making small talk with people he doesn’t know, but two drinks and three years of working at the BBC go a long way to put him in a social mood. There are far more 20-somethings living on the isle than Dan had originally anticipated, and an inkling of an idea for the documentary is beginning to take root in his mind.

He mostly sticks by Ben’s side and allows Ben to press a new drink into his hands every time he finishes one, because Ben feels oddly safe to Dan, even though they’ve only known each other for two days. Several times he glance up and thinks he catches Phil looking at him from across the room, a strange expression on his face; one that is both new and familiar all at once. Once or twice he _swears_ he sees Phil’s eyes trace their way down the line of Dan’s body from head to toe, and it makes his stomach do a weird swoopy thing, because it’s a look he recognizes from a long time ago, from nights that invariably ended with the two of them getting each other off in the closet at a party, or having sloppy shower sex upon arriving home from a night out.

Dan always looks away immediately, but Phil’s eyes continue to linger throughout the evening. It’s weird, because Ben is right here next to Dan and yet he and Phil aren’t looking at each other at all. He can’t imagine that Phil doesn’t know exactly what he’s doing, but the Phil Lester he knows— _knew—_ was not a cheater.

It happens to be incredibly warm in the small lounge, and after an hour or two, he is swaying slightly where he stands. “I’m going to go sit down,” he shouts to Ben over the music and voices all around them. He’s slightly amazed that parties this loud are tolerated on Mann, much less that Phil is hosting a party this loud, period. But then again, Ben seems to be more in charge of this show, and maybe all the elderly people had already taken out their hearing aids for the night before the party had begun.

He clumsily fights his way through the crowd to get to the couch—being tall is an advantage because he can see where he’s going, but it makes it harder to fit through the mass of bodies without accidentally elbowing everyone in the eye—and when he arrives and mercifully finds a cushion wide open, he collapses bonelessly onto it, choosing to ignore the couple that is making out on the other cushion.

Everything has that sort of hazy, swimming feeling to it, and he leans back and allows his eyes to drift shut—he doesn’t properly have the spins yet, but he can tell that if he has one more drink that that would probably do it.

He’s not even surprised when someone squeezes onto the cushion next to him, and he doesn’t need to open his eyes to know that it’s Phil. His choices are to either get up (not going to happen; he’d put in _so much effort_ to get over here in the first place), scoot closer to the amorous couple to put a little space between him and Phil (which, yeah…no…they might be at second base right now judging from the rustling noises next to him; he doesn’t want to look to find out), or just accept that he’s going to have to deal with Phil’s knee touching his.

Knee-touching is definitely the best option (which isn’t saying much), so he just stays put and tries to resist the way that the couch naturally sags towards Phil. It’s almost a gravitational pull, like the very forces of the universe want him to press further against the warmth of Phil’s side, right where he’s not allowed to be. Stupid couch cushions. Stupid laws of physics. Stupid gravity.

“Fucking Isaac Newton,” Dan mutters to himself, holding every single muscle in his leg tense so that his knee just barely grazes Phil’s. He tries his utmost not to look at the knees in question, but then he just ends up staring at the bare skin of Phil’s arm instead; where the plaid fabric of Phil’s short-sleeve button down ends and pale bicep begins. It just makes him a little more irrationally angry. “This is all his fault.”

“Not what I came over here expecting to discuss, but I can roll with it,” Phil remarks. “Here, you looked like you needed this, by the way.”

Dan finally looks up and Phil’s face is mere inches from his own. He’s holding out a glass of water, which—yes. All the yes. Dan downs half of it in one go, instantly feeling about ten degrees cooler and a good fraction less dizzy.

“Thanks,” he says, swiping at his mouth with the back of his hand. Phil’s eyes track the movement. “So what _did_ you come over here expecting to discuss?”

Phil shrugs, and Dan can feel the cushion shift and indent slightly with each movement Phil makes. He hasn’t felt this sexually repressed and over-aware of his body since Nicky Walters announced that they were going to play spin-the-bottle at a class party in year 8.

“How’s the documentary coming along?” Phil asks after a minute of ambient silence.

“I think I actually might have an idea,” Dan says, sitting up a little straighter and shifting into video visualization mode. “So, obviously everybody knows that a lot of old people live on Mann, right? Old news. So I’m thinking, the angle I _should_ be looking at is the young people. The 20-somethings who stay on the isle, or the people who leave for uni and then decide to come back. What makes a young person want to live here, you know?”

Phil is watching Dan’s animated gestures with a small smile. “That’s a good idea. You could interview almost anyone in this room, but definitely talk to Ben. He could make any documentary interesting.”

“Yeah, sure, Ben’s great,” Dan says with what he hopes is a casual grin. He sighs and flops back against the couch.

After a minute, he feels Phil tentatively lean back against the couch as well, so that they are suddenly, inevitably touching from shoulders to hips to knees. Which is too much, because—hadn’t they _just_ been talking about Ben? What is Phil trying to _do_?

As though reading Dan’s mind, Ben suddenly makes eye contact with him from across the room. He doesn’t look suspicious or jealous or mistrustful when he sees Phil and Dan practically plastered against one another, however. Instead he grins broadly, flashes a double thumbs-up at Dan, and nods in a way that pretty universally means “get it, mate!”

Which…is just too weird for Dan.

“Water!” He exclaims suddenly, after he feels he’s allowed this to go on long enough. He could almost swear that Phil is slowly inching his hand closer to where Dan’s hand rests on his own thigh, and he can’t just sit and watch it happen. “I need more water!” He lurches to his feet, wrenching himself away from the comfort of Phil’s frame. Phil’s face does something that Dan can’t quite read, but he just nods silently as Dan stumbles away.

He feels far more sober now that he’s cooled off and drank some water and sat for a bit, but he also feels drunker, in a different capacity. Drunk off the thumping bass; off the wheat-y smell of beer permeating the whole flat. Drunk off Phil’s closeness.

“Hey!” Ben says, grabbing Dan’s arm as he walks by on the way to the kitchen. “I need to ask you something!”

“Okay…” Dan says nervously, allowing Ben to follow him over to the sink as he refills his cup.

“Do you—”

“I don’t want to have a threesome with you guys!” Dan blurts out, because his brain-to-mouth filter is pretty much shot when he’s been drinking. “No offense, I’m just not…I wouldn’t be in to that.”

Ben opens his mouth and shuts it again, and Dan has the dawning realization that he may have just made a terrible mistake.

“Okay?” Ben says slowly. “That wasn’t even close to what I was about to ask you, but good to know, I guess? No offense taken? My girlfriend and I aren’t really looking for a third party anyway, so…”

“You have a girlfriend?” Dan asks stupidly.

He can see the exact instant that Ben makes sense of Dan’s confusion.

“Oh my god.” Ben glances over in the direction of Phil on the couch and then back to Dan. And he bursts out laughing. And he just keeps laughing. “You—you thought—that _Phil and I—_ oh my god, this is the greatest and most disturbing thing that’s ever happened to me.”

“Shut up,” Dan mumbles, feeling his ears go pink. “How was I supposed to know?”

“We’re _cousins._ I’m just here on fall break from school and I’m staying with Phil—on his _couch,_ by the way—because my parents live outside of the city in the middle of nowhere. And you actually thought—oh my god, I’m never going to stop making fun of you for this—I’m going to just randomly show up at your flat in London and stand outside your front door _laughing_ —”

“That’s rich coming from somebody whose grandparents are cousins,” Dan sniffs loftily in an attempt to cover up his embarrassment.

“My grandparents—or, should I say, _our grandparents,_ because Phil and I are _very much related_ —are extremely distant second cousins. Phil and I—just…no. No.” Ben is still shaking with laughter.

Dan drops his I’m-too-cool-to-be-humiliated act. “Could you just…maybe not tell Phil I thought you two were together?”

Ben studies him carefully. “’Course. No worries, mate. I _am_ still going to laugh at you for the rest of your life over this, though.”

“I wasn't really expecting otherwise,” Dan shrugs.

“You know, this is the first time Phil has let me throw a party here,” Ben remarks lightly, leaning against the kitchen counter. “I’ve been begging him for the past three years, because—like I said, I live in the middle of nowhere; nobody wants to come to my house. And then you show up and all of a sudden, bam! Here we are having a party. Interesting, don’t you think?”

Dan shrugs, unwilling to give anything more away to Ben. “I guess,” he says innocently.

Ben rolls his eyes and pats Dan on the shoulder, as though Dan is a bit helpless, but in an endearing sort of way. “You want to come to our grandparents’ for lunch tomorrow? That’s what I was going to ask you before you panicked and thought I was propositioning you.” That sends him off into another fit of laughter.

“Maybe,” Dan says, unable to think of anything besides memories of all the times Phil had invited him to meet his family and Dan had shut him down. Maybe it’s finally time, though. Maybe, maybe, maybe. Will he ever know how to navigate the canyons and cliffs of this thing between him and Phil?

* * *

On the way back from the kitchen, Dan ducks into the bedroom and shuts the door behind him, needing a minute to be alone and collect his thoughts. It’s a full moon and the room is flooded with mellow light. Dan crosses to stand in front of the window. He can’t actually see the water from Phil’s flat, which surprises him, since it had always been Phil’s dream to live by the sea.

He doesn’t know how long he stands there for—it could be a minute or it could be an hour before the door opens and Phil slips inside, looking completely unsurprised to see Dan standing there.

“Hey,” Phil says, shutting the door behind him and slowly walking over to the bed, as though any sudden movement might spook Dan and make him run away.

Phil takes a seat on the bed, and Dan’s throat constricts with a terrible sadness, because it’s the exact same duvet as it’s always been; the multi-colored panels, well-worn and soft with age and use. He has the complementary black and white one tucked away in his closet back in London.

As though being drawn in by the tide, Dan turns from the window and moves to stand on the other side of the bed, opposite where Phil sits. His fingers brush against the familiar fabric almost of their own volition.

“You still have Lion,” he says softly, reaching over and plucking the stuffed animal from where it’s sitting on the bedpost.

“Of course,” Phil says easily, flopping back onto his bed, starfishing out his limbs. “Some things will never change, Dan.”

 _What do you want from me?_ Dan wants to ask. And suddenly he is terrified by the small strip of Phil’s stomach that he can see where his shirt has ridden up slightly, and the way Phil’s eyes look soft and inviting in the moonlight. And he can’t bear to think about what all the glances and small touches tonight might have meant, because he knows—somehow he just _knows_ —that if Phil tries to touch him right now he will crumble into a million tiny pieces right where he is standing until he is nothing more than dust and ash.

“I have to go,” he says.

“Dan—” Phil says, sitting up and looking confused and dejected and so many other things that Dan can’t read because _Dan hardly even knows Phil anymore,_ and there had been a time when Phil had been the _only_ thing he’d known; a time when he hadn’t had a clue what he was going to do with his life or his future; hadn’t known anything for certain—except for the fact that he loved Phil Lester and that he was going to keep loving Phil Lester.

“I have to go,” he repeats, and then he is out the door, through the crowd, down the steps, and out on the street.

It takes him less than ten minutes to stride back to his hotel, and he takes the stairs two at a time until he is at his room, shrugging out of his jeans and t-shirt, clambering into bed and pulling the covers up to his chin.

He is dizzy and breathless and shaking as he lies there, eyes closed as the room spins behind his eyelids. He stays like that the whole night, unable to sleep; the world spinning on and on. And on. And on.

 


	2. Chapter 2

_2013_

_“How’ve you been, Dan?” PJ asks as they take a seat in the back corner of the pub. It’s nice having old friends that live in London, because Dan has spent a lot of lonely nights pacing around his dingy flat over the past months._

_“Oh, you know. Busy with work,” Dan shrugs, because that’s really the only thing that’s been filling up his time lately. The only exciting news in his personal life that he could possibly bring up is that he’d switched laundry detergents and now his clothes are approximately 30% softer._

_“Oh, yeah, congrats about the radio show!” PJ beams. “That’s brilliant.”_

_“Thanks,” Dan says, trying to grin, but the facial expression feels almost unfamiliar on his face nowadays. He’d started off as a BBC intern a last year and worked his ass off to climb the ladder there; pulling 70-hour work weeks, jumping at any opportunity to cover air time for radio hosts who were sick or out of town. And he’s finally been given his very own radio show. It’s everything he’d wanted when he’d moved to London, but it’s still not quite enough. “Yeah, it’s exciting news.”_

_PJ looks at him with such sympathy and understanding that it makes him want to cry._

_“Peej, can I ask you something?” He says, staring quite hard at his pint of beer._

_“Of course,” PJ says. He already knows exactly what Dan is about to ask._

_Dan sighs. “How is he? Have you talked to him much lately?”_

_PJ takes a long sip of his beer. “He’s doing alright, Dan. He’s left YouTube, which I’m sure you already know—” (true, because Dan has had Phil on alert on all social media since 2009, and there hasn’t been a single notification since their break-up last year. It’s like he’s just fallen off the face of the earth, much to the confusion and dismay of all the fans, who still regularly get #WhereIsPhil trending on twitter.) “—and he’s gone for a complete career change. I think he’s as happy as he can be, considering the circumstances. Do you really want to know more?"_

_And Dan thinks about it—the fact that it has been an entire year since he’s last heard Phil’s laugh or woken up to Phil humming in the shower or spent an entire day just camping out on the couch watching anime with Phil, and the fact that he still misses Phil just as much a year later as he did the day after their break-up._

_“No,” he says. “I don’t want to know more.”_

_A week later, Dan posts his last video to YouTube, appropriately entitled ‘Goodbye Internet’, where he simply explains that he has a full-time job at the BBC and so he won’t be able to make YouTube videos anymore, but that people can tune in to hear him on the radio. The backlash is about what he’d expected—some people are sad, some people are angry, most are understanding, and many are worried he’s just going to disappear like Phil._

_#WhereIsDan trends briefly, and Dan wonders if Phil is out there somewhere, also thinking about where Dan is and what he is up to. It hurts too much to think about though, and Dan finally goes through and removes his notification alerts from Phil for everything but Twitter and YouTube, because Dan still remembers being eighteen and getting his first tweet from Phil. And YouTube…well, that’s where it had all begun, and now neither of them are on YouTube so it doesn’t even matter anymore._

* * *

They make a strange, pathetic little procession the next day; Dan, Phil, and Ben—all suffering from varying degrees of hangover, slumping through the streets of Douglas on the way to Phil and Ben’s grandparents’ house. Dan and Phil aren’t really looking at each other much after—well, after _whatever_ it was that had happened the two of them last night happened. Ben is still quietly dying over the fact that Dan had presumed that he and Phil were a couple interested in threesomes, so Dan isn’t really looking at him, either, because every time he does Ben starts shaking with silent laughter.

Mostly he just looks at his feet a lot as they walk, and he wishes he’d thought to take some acetaminophen that morning before leaving his hotel to meet Phil and Ben.

He can tell that Phil is still surprised by Dan’s presence on this outing. Earlier in the morning when Dan had appeared at the coffee shop that Ben had texted him the location of (how and when Ben had gotten his number, Dan doesn’t even want to know), Phil had raised one eyebrow upon seeing him willing and ready to go meet the Lester grandparents, almost as if in challenge.

But Dan hadn’t blinked or backed down, because he’s made it a point in his life over the past few years to do things that scare him or unnerve him or make him uncomfortable, and this little excursion is definitely going to do all three of those things.

He wishes he’d thought to make Aled or Alistair tag along with him, though, when they round a bend in the road and finally come upon the Lesters’ house, because it is literally the essence of what he wants to capture in this documentary—a simple country house tucked neatly away on a verdant bluff overlooking a rocky beach, tiny and isolated against the backdrop of the sea. Unfortunately he’d given Aled and Alistair a list of names from Ben’s party and told them to spend the day contacting people for interviews, and he doesn’t know that his iPhone camera could do the landscape justice.

“Wow,” he says, slightly breathless, stopping in his tracks to simply stare for a minute. Both Phil and Ben look over at him, unfazed by their surroundings, because they’ve probably walked this road hundreds of times before. But Phil’s gaze softens slightly when he sees that Dan is genuinely awestruck, and Ben grins and jostles Dan in the side with his elbow.

“Pretty epic, right? Here’s your answer for why people come back to Mann.”

And then they are at the house and Dan is suddenly being introduced to the grandparents and aunts and uncles and more cousins than he will ever be able to remember the names of. Phil’s parents are there too, which shouldn’t surprise him because he’d known that they had a house somewhere on the Isle. It’s still unsettling to see them again after so many years, though, and by the time lunch is over he feels thoroughly overwhelmed.

“I can wash the dishes,” Dan volunteers tentatively, needing a break from the table conversation, which is jumping from topic to topic in a very Lester-like manner. (So far he’s talked about growing perennials vs. annuals with Phil’s aunt, Zayn Malik leaving One Direction with Phil’s young cousin—who had shrieked so loudly upon hearing that Dan had met and interviewed One Direction that Phil’s grandma had threatened to take out her hearing aids for the rest of the meal—and dialectal differences between Mann and the rest of England with Ben, who keeps trying to make Dan quote posh lines from Winnie the Pooh.)

Of course, everyone immediately breaks into the typical ‘but you’re a guest; you can’t clean our house!’ protests. Everyone except Phil’s mum. (And Ben, too, who obligingly shoves all of his dirty dishes into Dan’s arms right then and there.)

“Oh, let him do the washing up if he wants to,” Phil’s mum says, waving everybody off. “You wash, I’ll dry, alright, dear?”

“Uh…okay,” Dan says nervously, because Mrs. Lester _has_ to know that Dan had broken Phil’s heart all those years ago, and if anyone has a right to hate him, it’s her.

“Mum…” Phil says, a hint of warning in his voice.

“We’re _just_ going to wash the dishes. Mind your own business, Philip,” Mrs. Lester says primly, collecting a stack of plates and motioning for Dan to follow her to the kitchen.

They unload all the dishes and then there is a moment where they have to just stand and wait for the sink to fill with hot water. Dan clears his throat three times and fails to think of any way to start a casual conversation with his ex’s mum. He’s missed Phil’s parents; he dimly recognizes that now. He’d spent a lot of time at their house during the Manchester years, going home with Phil for the home-cooked meals and the free cable.

Mrs. Lester still smells the same, vaguely like flowers and cinnamon, and it’s a complete shock to Dan when she turns to him after testing the water temperature and just holds her arms open for an embrace, not bothering to say anything.

He goes willingly into her arms, and his throat goes tight as she squeezes him in that way that all mums have of squeezing people. Dan doesn’t go home much, so his mum hasn’t hugged him in ages—actually, _nobody_ has hugged him in ages.

“It’s so good to see you again, Dan,” Mrs. Lester says when she draws back, and he can tell that she really means it. “You’ve grown up so well—every time I hear your voice on the radio, I think to myself, ‘that’s my Daniel’.”

Her kindness, even after all these years, breaks something inside of him a little bit. He can only nod, unable to speak.

“You know, I can just as quickly wash these dishes by myself,” she says thoughtfully, studying his face. “Why don’t you go get a bit of fresh air? I know this family can be overwhelming, trust me—I was a wreck when I first started hanging around with them. And that Benjamin—well, don’t even get me started on him and the trouble he causes around here. Now go on; out of the kitchen.”

And he should really protest—it had been his idea to wash up in the first place, after all—but she is already shooing him away from the sink, and he can’t deny that having a moment to himself would be nice.

That’s how he finds himself sitting on a rocky outcrop, hugging his knees and watching waves crash onto the rocks below him.

“Mum said I’d find you out here,” Phil’s voice says from behind him a few minutes later. He walks to stand next to Dan slowly, and then takes a seat next to him, almost tentatively.

Dan just sighs, eyes focused on the waves. “Your mum is too nice to me.”

Phil doesn’t speak for a moment. “She misses you, you know,” Phil says. “I think she always thought we’d end up getting married someday.”

And Dan doesn’t have anything to say to _that_.

They settle into a long silence, but it’s not uncomfortable.

“I think I read somewhere that this entire Isle is only fifteen miles wide,” Dan finally remarks. “Doesn’t that ever make you feel trapped?”

Phil turns to the water, his gaze far away; fixed somewhere on the horizon, past all the rocks and stormy waves. “No. It makes me feel free, because we’re surrounded by the sea.”

A long pause.

“I told you that, you know,” Phil says, his voice neutral. “About the fifteen miles. On the phone once when I was here visiting my grandparents. You fell asleep as I talked about buying a house and building a future here.”

“I remember,” Dan says, his voice small, nearly lost to the sound of the waves.

“I wanted to buy that house for you,” Phil confesses, exhaling a bitter laugh. “But even back then, you wanted more than to live by the sea and make videos. You wanted the whole world. And I just wanted you—you _were_ my whole world.”

He can feel the sleeve of Phil’s jacket brushing against his own arm, and yet, Phil has never felt further away from him than he does right now.

“Phil—”

“Don’t, Dan.” And then Phil is standing and walking away, leaving Dan to feel very small and very tired.

* * *

“Whatever Phil said to you, I’m sure he didn’t mean it.”

Ben’s voice is the next to approach him, and he wonders what it is with the Lester family and reading him like an open book.

“Phil has the right to say whatever he wants to me after what I did to him,” Dan says honestly. “And he didn’t even say anything bad. It was all true, anyway.”

Ben takes a seat exactly where Phil had been not fifteen minutes earlier. “You need to lighten up, mate,” he grins, bumping his shoulder against Dan’s. “And by the way, Phil totally takes joint responsibility for your break-up. Naturally, it’d be nice if he actually told you this himself, but instead he just subjects me to hour-long soliloquies about it every time he’s drunk.”

“Phil talks about me? To you?”

“Jesus Christ, is that even a real question? You’re all I’ve heard about from him for six years now—honestly, it was a relief to finally meet you in person, because if I had to hear about how lovely your nose was or how brown your eyes were one more time, I swear—”

“Phil thinks I have a lovely nose?” Dan asks faintly. “And notably brown eyes?”

“Well, to be fair, the last few years of ranting have been more directed at all Phil’s regrets about your relationship, and less about your physical attributes—not that you don’t have ‘very brown eyes’ or whatever—if I ever start a crayon company I’ll name a color after you—but I haven’t heard much about that lately. I suspect I will the next time he and I drink together, though,” Ben explains, rolling his eyes long-sufferingly.

“Huh,” Dan says, startled by this revelation.

“Look, I don’t want to get involved or anything; I’m just telling you the facts. Now come back into the house, would you? _I_ already know that you’re weird as fuck, but my family is going to start thinking you’re on some crazy hunger strike, sitting out here in the cold during dessert.”

It’s fairly offensive, but it’s said with such affection that Dan accepts Ben’s hand up and follows him into the house without complaining.

* * *

 

_2014_

_Having job security and being free of YouTube gives Dan a lot of spare time to think in 2014. So he gives in to the existential crises for the first time in his life, and he finally figures himself out. He books a holiday to Japan because he’s always wanted to go, and sometimes, he decides, it’s okay to do nice things for yourself._

_When he gets back from holiday, he officially comes out as bi. Well, sort of, anyway. He’s never going to be the type to make a big announcement out of his sexuality; to film a video about it or write a book about it. That may work well for other people, and he respects that, but it’s just not him._

_Instead, he just starts seeing whoever he wants, no lies or pretenses, and it finally feels good and easy and **right**. If he goes to a party or a bar and wants to sleep with somebody and they want to sleep with him, he does it, regardless of gender. _

_Meanwhile, big things are happening in his career. His radio show is one of BBC’s highest rated, and he’s begun picking up a lot more presenting work as well—interviewing celebrities, hosting backstage events at awards shows—all of England is suddenly charmed by Dan Howell; the tall, awkwardly relatable guy from BBC._

_He makes loads of new friends—there is still PJ and Chris, but there’s also Grimmy and Jameela from the radio, and Louise and Zoe and Jack Howard from YouTube._

_"You know,” Louise tells him one night when they’ve been drinking heavily at Zoe’s book publishing party. “I really don’t know why you’re still single. You’re such a catch!”_

_“I had a really bad break-up two years ago,” Dan shouts over the music, honest in a way that is only brought out by alcohol._

_“Two years is such a long time, though! Why don’t you get back out there and try again?” She asks, genuinely curious._

_“It wasn’t really that kind of break-up, Louise,” Dan says, wondering how on earth to explain Phil and what Phil had meant to him to her in just a sentence or two. “It’s the kind of thing where I don’t think I’ll ever actually get over it.”_

_And Louise is smart—so much smarter than him, emotionally. “That sounds like a once-in-a-lifetime kind of thing then,” she muses thoughtfully. “Maybe you should do something about fixing it before it’s too late.”_

_“Maybe,” Dan says, because he’s drunk and he can be honest with himself and admit that he’s come an awfully long way, but he’s still not quite there yet._

* * *

Time passes quickly after the trip to the Lester grandparents’ house. Dan spends his days interviewing Phil and Ben’s friends, and his nights hanging out with Phil and Ben at Phil’s flat.

He learns a lot about Mann—there’s no university on the island, so every person he interviews who is uni-educated had had to make the choice to come back at some point, for some reason or another.

Phil’s friend Sarah, for example, is one of the only people alive under the age of 30 who speaks Mann’s native language, and she spends her days teaching the language to the island’s schoolchildren in hopes of keeping it alive. There’s a young vet named George who’d singlehandedly stopped an operation to catch Manx cats and illegally smuggle them to be sold on the mainland. He goes to the news station where Phil works and interviews the anchors there, and they let him stay and watch Phil do his broadcast, and he marvels at Phil’s ease behind the camera; his focus and the way he somehow makes the weather report entertaining and vaguely engaging. He wouldn’t be out of place in the BBC Radio 1 broadcast studio, to be honest.

He also gradually learns that all of Phil’s friends know exactly who he is. Literally all of them.

“I’m just so glad you’re back in Phil’s life again, no matter if it’s only for a week or two,” Sarah gushes after he’s finished interviewing her, which is…nice? Odd? Creepy considering he’s only just met her? “Did he ever tell you that some friends set us up on a blind date when we first met a few years ago? The date was a nightmare, but we’re still really good friends.”

“Phil always stops by the clinic when he has a moment,” George tells him. “But he has to stand outside to look at the cats since he’s allergic…oh, although I guess you obviously know that already, right?”

“Hey, mate, if you’re looking to move to Mann, I could find you a flat right near Phil’s,” Brandon, Phil’s friend who happens to be a real estate agent, earnestly promises him literal seconds after they meet for the first time.

In the evenings, he and Phil and Ben sit around Phil’s lounge and drink beers and watch crappy TV programming that is clearly aimed at the elderly demographic of the isle. It’s weird how _not-_ weird it is, returning to hanging out with Phil again.

Ben is there too, of course, but sometimes he mysteriously ‘has to go to bed early’ at night because he ‘has a thing the next day’, which means that he kicks Dan and Phil out of the flat so that he can ‘sleep’ in the lounge, and Dan and Phil are forced to go on long walks through the quiet streets of Douglas to while away the hours. (Ben can says what he wants about ‘not getting involved’, but Dan is totally on to him, because he’s on a break from school and has nowhere to be in the mornings, and he’s always still awake when they get back.)

He doesn’t mind, though—he and Phil ease into something that’s not quite friendship (because after all they’ve been through, they’ll never be able to just be friends), but the sexual tension that had been there the night of the party has dimmed into both of them being very sober and not quite knowing how to orbit around one another with this new dynamic between them. There is a lot of accidental arm brushing as they wander the streets, and once or twice Phil’s hand comes to rest on the small of Dan’s back to steer him somewhere as they walk.

It’s crazy how the simple momentary pressure of Phil’s fingers against his back can make him feel like his stomach is melting into his shoes; that this is the most sexual attraction he has experienced in three years in spite of having slept with roughly a dozen people in that same time frame.

He keeps his hands to himself, though, because he has no clue what the fuck is happening between the two of them, and he doesn’t think Phil does either. Instead, he tries to just be content and enjoy the time they have together. Being on bad terms with Phil has been quietly hurting him more than he’s realized, and now that that weight is no longer pressing down on his chest after three years, he feels a strange lightness with his every thought and movement.

But then comes the morning when he realizes that he has really interviewed everyone there is to interview, except for Ben and Phil.

“I’ve booked us all a flight for tomorrow morning,” Alistair tells Dan when he finds the two cameramen eating breakfast in the hotel lobby. “We’re due to meet with the BBC producers in the afternoon.”

“So soon?” Dan asks, stealing a packet of jam from Alistair for his toast.

“ _Soon?_ We’ve been here for just over a week and I think I’ve aged 70 years during that time,” Aled grumbles. “Not all of us are out here having a romantic vacation, Howell. Some of us actually want our contracts renewed for next year.”

Which…shit. It’s contract renewal time again, which is a tense time of the year for everyone. This is the first year that Dan honestly isn’t worried—he knows he’s a huge asset to the BBC—but he can understand why Aled and Alistair aren’t exactly thrilled to be here.

“Just two more interviews,” he promises them, not even bothering to address the ‘romantic vacation’ jab. They grumble good-naturedly as he drags them with all the camera equipment over to Phil’s flat that afternoon.

Ben’s interview is as interesting as Phil had promised it would be—apparently he’s doing a doctorate in history at Leeds and wants to return to the isle and start up a proper university here, which, if anyone can do that, Ben can. Phil isn’t around because his weird broadcasting schedule means he has to be at the news station for a few hours in the morning to do the morning report, and a few hours in the late afternoon for the evening report. He can sense that Aled and Alistair have no desire to spend their last night sitting around on Phil’s couch and waiting for Phil to finish reporting on the weather, so he sends them back to the hotel with the promise that he can conduct the interview on his own.

“Honestly, the BBC forgets that I got my start on YouTube—it’s not like I _need_ either of you,” he says with a cheeky grin.

“Have a nice date—oops, I mean interview,” Alistair says sweetly as they pack up and leave.

“Stop the bullying!” Dan shouts after them, before flopping next to Ben on the couch to watch Jeremy Kyle until Phil arrives home.

* * *

They end up taking a walk in the opposite direction of where they usually wander. Phil had seemed unusually tired and down when he’d arrived back from the 5:00 news, and all he’d said was: “Storms predicted tonight. You want to go for a walk now before it rains?”

And Dan had nodded and grabbed his bag and wordlessly followed.

“So,” Phil says after they’ve walked for a good twenty minutes. They’re on the road out of town, and Phil seems to be walking with a strange sort of purpose. “This is your last night here, yeah?”

“Yeah,” Dan says quietly, because there’s really nothing to say beyond that. As nice as this past week has been, life outside is still spinning onwards, in spite of this private little world on Mann.

“I don’t think I really want to be interviewed,” Phil says. “Can we just…hang out tonight?”

“Okay,” Dan says easily, because they already have more than enough footage for the documentary and he's pretty much willing to agree to anything Phil asks of him.

“I want to show you my favorite place on the isle,” Phil says when they reach a small fork in the road. Naturally, Phil leads them down the rocky, muddy path and not the nice paved road. It’s getting dark and chilly, and yet there is nowhere Dan would rather be right now than following Phil out onto the beach as the sun dips into the horizon, unable to feel his fingers with the cold; shoes quickly filling up with sand as they traipse along.

“It’s…perfect,” he breathes when they come to stand on the ridge of a sand dune, overlooking the beach and the water. It’s a dark, muted sunset—Dan doesn’t need an advanced degree in meteorology to be able to feel the storm coming on—but it somehow suits the current mood of the little cove they are looking down upon. He can only imagine what the place must look like on a sunny day—the deep blue-gray of the sea, the bright green of the meadow surrounding them; the smell of salt and brine; the soft warmth of sun against skin. It all feels like somewhere that he’s visited in his dreams before but can’t quite call to coherent memory.

There is a little white house up on a hill, just off where they are standing on the beach. It’s quite similar to Phil’s grandparents’ house, but different at the same time—the whole place has a wild, lonely feel to it—as though the world outside could end and nations could crumble and human life could disappear, but this house and this bluff would still be here, untouched and unspoiled.

“You think so? My whole family thinks I’m crazy for being so interested in the lot. It’s been for sale for almost a year, and so far nobody’s expressed any interest, except Brandon. And that’s just because he’s the realtor and it’s literally his job to sell it.”

“You should buy it,” Dan says, blurting the words out before he is even aware that’s he’s thinking them. “If it would make you happy, you should do it. Who cares what other people think?”

Phil gives him a long, considering look. “Yeah?” He asks, and it sounds like a simple question, but it’s _not,_ because the statement Dan had just made went against everything younger Dan believed in and stood for in wanting to hide their relationship.

“Yeah.” Phil’s cheeks have gone pink with cold, and Dan suddenly, arbitrarily wants dart forward and kiss them. “I came out, you know,” he remarks after a long minute. “I mean, I didn’t like…make a video or an announcement or anything. But everyone in my life knows I’m bi now.”

“See, I told you you’d get there,” Phil grins, nudging Dan’s shoulder with his own and sounding genuinely proud and delighted.

And suddenly Dan can’t take it any longer. “Why are you being so _nice_ to me?” He explodes, throwing his hands in the air helplessly. “Seriously, this whole week you haven’t—” _you haven’t tried to hurt me the way I hurt you,_ his mind supplies. “You’ve just…been nice,” he trails off lamely.

Phil, as always, hears exactly what Dan hasn’t said. “Look, Dan, you hurt me. But I hurt you, too—I _know_ I did, you don’t have to pretend otherwise.” It is almost completely dark now, but he can see the seriousness of Phil’s words in the set of his jaw through the shadows.

“We both did things wrong, you know? So we can either be mad and hurt for the rest of time, I figure, or we can forgive each other—and I forgave you ages ago. So I mean…I guess the only question now is, can you forgive me?” Phil’s voice is frank; earnest. Full of promise.

And it’s so much more than Dan deserves, but he wants Phil’s forgiveness _so badly,_ the same way he wants to breathe and to eat and to sleep in a warm place at night.

“Yes,” he says, and it comes out sounding like a relieved laugh. “Yes, of course.”

And naturally, because Dan’s life is like some sort of horrible Lifetime movie, this is the exact instant that the heavens finally break open, and then ice cold rain is streaming down Dan’s cheeks and plastering his fringe to his forehead and soaking through his clothes like a benediction, but it doesn’t even matter and he’s still laughing, holding his palms up to catch raindrops.

“Uh, Dan…I’m all for having inspirational moments in the rain,” Phil shouts over the downpour, shaking Dan’s arm. “But your camera—”

Which. Yes, the state-of-the-art camera that belongs to the BBC and is currently slung over his shoulder in a rather thin messenger bag is a cause for some concern. A messenger bag that also contains— “Oh, fuck, my laptop!” Dan shouts, taking off after Phil in a dead sprint for shelter in the white house. Phil is laughing as he runs, because the only time Dan will properly run is to protect his technology, and then they are darting into the house and slamming the door behind them as the gale picks up force.

“The door isn’t kept locked?” Dan asks, breathlessly rifling through his bag to check that nothing had sustained any water damage.

“Nah. Crime isn’t really an issue on Mann. I come here to think sometimes, and it’s always open.” Phil listens intently to the rain while timing it on his watch. “I think we might be stuck here for a while until this works itself out,” he says, his face apologetic.

“Some weatherman you are,” Dan says, mock-disapproving as he shrugs out of his wet jacket. The house is largely unfurnished—there’s a table and some rickety-looking chairs in the kitchen, and a well-worn couch tucked in front of the fireplace—but it seems clean and has working electricity. And it has Phil. So all in all, not a bad situation.

“Weather by the sea is always hard to predict,” Phil says mildly. He seems to be forcing himself not to look at Dan, and Dan realizes that the soaked, thin cotton of his shirt is clinging obscenely to his torso. “Here, there’s a bunch of blankets in the closet; you can dry off.”

“Sure,” Dan says easily, kicking off his shoes and stripping off his t-shirt as Phil rummages through the closet. He doesn’t know why, but this feels completely different to the night of the party, when Phil had looked at him and he’d run. He doesn’t want to run anymore; not after what they’d just said on the beach.

Phil turns around and visibly falters at the sight of Dan’s shirtlessness, almost dropping his stack of blankets.

“Is it warm in here, or is it just me?” Phil blurts out. “I’m going to go start a fire.” Which doesn’t quite make sense, but Dan isn’t going to protest any additional warmth right now. Phil thrusts the blankets into Dan’s arms and begins grabbing logs from a small stack of firewood that Dan hadn’t noticed earlier.

“You and fire? Should I be alarmed?” Dan asks, quickly drying off with the smallest blanket. He begins laying the rest of the blankets—seriously, why does one abandoned little house need so many blankets?—out on the floor in front of the fire, stacking them on top of each other to create a makeshift blankets-mattress.

“Hey, I’ve learned a lot in three years of living here! Ben even made me go camping with him. Twice,” Phil says, turning to grin at Dan from where he is crouched, coaxing small flames into life.

“It’s like we don’t even have anything in common anymore,” Dan deadpans, passing a spare blanket to Phil, who stands so that he can dry off too. The room instantly feels warmer as the fire builds, soft light from the flames dancing off the walls.

“I’ll let you in on a secret,” Phil says, his voice low and conspiratorial as he tosses his own t-shirt and the damp blanket over the back of the couch to dry. Dan steps closer, bridging the space between the two of them, and Phil visibly swallows before continuing. “I hated every second of it.”

“That’s not a secret, Phil,” Dan says, and he’s so close he can feel the heat from Phil’s skin radiating outwards.          

“No?” Phil says, and his cheeks are flushed and his expression is slightly dazed as he meets Dan’s gaze, as though he doesn’t quite remember exactly what they’re talking about. He reaches out slowly and gently— _so gently_ —brushes a damp piece of hair off Dan’s forehead. “Your hair is curling,” he murmurs, dark eyes flickering down to Dan’s mouth, and then they are both leaning in towards one another, like magnets, like plants stretching for the sun’s warmth, like all other inevitable things—life, death, heartbreak. Taxes. Small moments of happiness.

There is an instant before their lips meet where they both pause; just a hair’s breadth of distance between them.

“I’m sorry I left, for the record,” Dan exhales, barely a whisper.

“I’m sorry I let you go,” Phil returns, and then they are crashing together, nothing shy or tentative about it.

And Dan had thought, this entire time since the night of the party, that Phil touching him would feel like shattering and disintegrating and splintering apart all at once; an onslaught of painful memories and could-have-beens and misunderstandings, all from the slightest brush of Phil’s lips against Dan’s neck, or Phil’s fingers skimming over the skin of Dan’s stomach. But now that it’s happening, it’s the exact opposite; as though all his rough edges and jagged cracks have been softened and smoothed over and filled in with light; as though he’s been drowning in stormy black waves and a hand has closed around his wrist and pulled him ashore.

The pressure of Phil’s lips is somehow completely new and completely familiar all at once, and Dan just fucking _melts_ into it; allows his lips to part and loses himself to everything but the way that Phil’s fingers tangle in his hair and the way their bodies still fit perfectly together, even if it’s in a totally different manner after all these years.

They kiss for long moments; not a desperate build-up, but more a deep and languid release. Phil eventually draws back for air and huffs out a laugh, breath warm on Dan’s jaw.

“This is honestly the worst place for this to happen; trapped in an empty house—I don’t have anything, and I don’t even know if this place has running water, much less condoms or lube—”

And Dan is feeling a little lightheaded on account of _how much he cannot believe this is actually happening,_ but his mind seizes in on the key words of Phil’s sentence. “Toiletry bag,” he says, feverishly grabbing for his discarded messenger bag. “This is my travel bag for work; I never know how long radio events or award shows are going to last so I always bring toiletries just in case—”

He triumphantly pulls a condom and a packet of lube out, but then realizes the implications of the fact that he so readily has both available.

“I’ve had sex in the past three years,” he blurts out, suddenly feeling a need to explain himself. “Multiple times.”

“Okay,” Phil shrugs easily. “Me too. Only once or twice—it never felt right, in the end.”

“It was more than once or twice for me,” Dan says truthfully. “And sometimes it was really good, but at the end of the day, if I'm being honest, they were never you.”

“Well, here I am,” Phil says, pale and beautiful by the light of the fire.

And then they fall into the nest of blankets together, and Phil is so gentle and reverent as he opens Dan up and pushes inside, and as Dan shudders and comes undone beneath Phil's fingers, between whispers and feverish kisses, he thinks about how this thing between them feels like stepping across the threshold after a long journey away from home. And he thinks about things falling apart and then falling back together, being made whole again against all odds. And he wonders what it all means.

* * *

There is a brief moment of confusion when Dan awakes. He’s immediately aware of the fact that he’s been asleep on a very uncomfortable surface—a closer inspection reveals a rather flimsy pile of blankets on a hardwood floor—and that he is also, paradoxically, the most comfortable that he can remember being for a long time, in spite of an aching back, a desperate need to pee, and the unforgiving morning sun pressing against his eyelids.

The extreme comfort probably has something to do with the 6’2” of Phil Lester that is pressed up against his side. His confused shifting seems to have woken Phil as well, because Phil is blinking sleepily and staring at Dan as though he’s not totally sure if he’s awake or dreaming.

“You’re here,” Phil mumbles sleepily, sounding surprised. Dan is sure his own hair looks like a bird’s nest, but Phil’s has formed itself into a quiff overnight, and there is a hint of stubble along his jaw that makes Dan want to never leave this makeshift bed again, but—

“No, no, why are you getting up? It’s _cold,_ ” Phil grumbles, because Dan is jolting out of their nest of blankets, suddenly recalling that he has a flight to catch in—less than two hours according to his dying iPhone.

“Shit, shit, shit,” Dan mutters under his breath as he collects his scattered clothes and toiletry bag and makes a run for the bathroom, cringing as he pulls on his still-damp jeans and stiffly-dried t-shirt. He splashes a bit of water on his face and allows himself the indulgence of taking a minute to brush his teeth, because it feels like something had died in his mouth overnight.

Phil is more awake by the time Dan returns, sitting up and stretching. Dan has to look away from the way Phil’s muscles expand and contract as he stretches to work out the tightness in his back, because if he looks he’ll want to touch, and then he’ll never be able to leave.

“You’re going,” Phil says, and it’s not a question.

“I have a meeting with my producers in London this afternoon,” Dan says. He has a headache and he has no clue where he and Phil stand right now.

“Okay,” Phil says.

Silence stretches between them for a long minute. Dan suddenly, desperately doesn’t want to go—doesn’t want to return to life without Phil in it. Doesn’t know how he’s going to return to a lonely apartment and 50-hour work weeks now that he’s had a taste of life otherwise again.

“You should text me. Or tweet me. If you want,” Dan says suddenly. “I don’t—I don’t want it to be like it was before between us.”

“We could Skype,” Phil suggests with a grin, standing and pulling on his boxers.

“You and I are like a walking commercial for fucking Skype,” Dan says, shaking his head and forcing a grin onto his face. “I could visit again,” he offers tentatively. “Or you could come see me in London, if you ever wanted.”

“Yeah, maybe,” Phil says politely, and Dan can hear the underlying message; visits are nice, but kind of meaningless. You visit your mates at uni. You visit your gran on Easter. You don't visit your ex of three years. But Dan doesn’t know what else he can do—just refuse to ever leave this island again; completely abandon the BBC? Quit his job and start farming sheep here on Mann and spend the rest of his life trying to get Phil to love him again?

All of those options feel too huge and scary, and Dan has always been better at walking away than facing the big things. _I would stay if you wanted me to,_ he wants to say. But instead he goes.

* * *

 

_2015_

_There are initials carved into the wall of the Manchester train station._

_Behind the vending machines, down the corridor from the Starbucks. Dan knows, because he’d been the one to carve them, all the way back in 2009, when he and Phil had ducked back there for a quick make-out session before Dan had to catch his train back to Reading one winter weekend. It had dissolved into a fifteen-minute grope, naturally, and then they’d just stood with their foreheads pressed together, counting the days until they could be together again. Those early days had been happy ones in spite of the distance, kisses stolen and entire lives revolving around when they could see each other next._

_It’s 2015 now, though, and the Dan that visits the Manchester Piccadilly vending machines now is a different Dan, on his way to catch a ferry to the Isle of Man to film a BBC documentary._

_The initials are still there when Dan stops to buy a soda, and they have been worn away slightly by time, impossible to see unless you know to look for them. The plaster of the wall crumbles slightly as Dan presses his finger over the indents, leaving dust on his fingertips. He is suddenly furious, incapable of seeing anything but the ghost of his younger self, happy and innocent, carving their initials here and thinking their impression would last forever in the wall; that he and Phil would last forever in the world._

_He fumbles in his bag for a marker or a pen, ready to vindictively cross the carvings out; to scribble over them until they are illegible—when something else catches his eye amongst all the other bits of graffiti. In between all the other scrawled messages—‘fuck the police’ and ‘Meg loves Dean’—someone has written **'where you used to be, there is a hole in the world'** with a steady hand and a black sharpie._

_And Dan **knows** that quote—it comes from the correspondences of Edna St. Vincent Millay and it had appeared in an anthology of poetry and essays that Phil had kept from his uni days. They’d read it together one lazy Saturday morning in Manchester years and years ago. _

“You read it,” _Phil had said, his head pillowed on Dan’s lap as they’d idly flipped through the pages. “_ You’re the one with the nice posh accent; it’ll sound better.”

“No, I want you to read it to me,” _Dan had said, making sad, hopeful eyes at Phil until he’d acquiesced._

_And even now, all these years later, he can still hear Phil’s voice ringing in his ears, starting off shy and growing more confident as he read on. He can still remember how they'd fallen back to sleep at 2 in the afternoon that day, drifting off between lazy kisses just because they could. And, though he hadn't been aware of it until this exact moment six years later, he still remembers the entire phrase:  
_

 

Where you used to be, there is a hole in the world, which I find myself constantly walking around in the daytime, and falling in at night. I miss you like hell.

 

  _Dan traces over the words slowly, and then puts the marker away. He has a ferry to catch, after all._

_There are initials carved into the wall of the Manchester train station. Behind the vending machine, down the corridor from the Starbucks. Dan leaves them be._

* * *

Dan is about to walk into his contract negotiation meeting—straight after getting off a flight and rushing to a meeting with the documentary producers; this day is the _worst—_ when his phone starts blowing up with Twitter notifications.

He’s not unfamiliar with being a source of Twitter buzz—it’s happened often enough throughout the years, and it’s usually for some very weird and random reason (the time he ate a satsuma at a One Direction concert and accidentally became a meme comes to mind). But this is a Twitterstorm the likes of which he’s never seen before.

And as he warily scrolls through his notifications and realizes what had happened, he feels his stomach sink, because he and Phil have been caught out.

By a tweet from the Isle of Man news station, of all things.

He can understand why they’d posted the picture—they’re a small little studio, with less than a thousand followers on Twitter and absolutely no knowledge of Dan and Phil’s backstory and the significance of the two of them being photographed together after three years. To whoever ran the social media accounts at the station, it had probably been just a throwaway little promo tweet; one that would get ten favorites and maybe a couple of retweets. But now #WhereAreDanandPhil is trending, and the tweet currently has over 10K retweets.

At first glance, the picture looks completely innocent: it’s from the day that Dan had visited the studio for interviews, and Phil is standing in front of the camera and doing his weather broadcast like usual. The caption simply says ‘our weatherman Phil Lester had an old friend visit him at the studio today!’ and there’s the really incriminating bit of the photo: in the corner, Dan is watching Phil speak, an unmistakably fond smile on his face.

Dan can only imagine how the tweet had been unearthed from obscurity—probably someone’s grandmother or auntie who lived on the island had seen it and sent it on to a former fan with a ‘hey, aren’t these those two guys you used to be obsessed with?’ and it had all spiraled out of control from there.

The fans seem to have dissolved into a state of mass hysteria, and Dan consciously decides that he doesn’t care. Phil is important to him, and he’s not ashamed of that anymore. He just regrets all of this happening so suddenly, because Phil had never asked to be thrust back into the limelight again, and yet, here he is.

Dan is wondering if he should tweet something to calm everyone down, but then his manager John is calling him into the meeting and he can do nothing but put his phone on silent and follow John into the conference room.

* * *

When he finally has his revelation, naturally it’s in front of the entire board of BBC directors.

He’s sitting in his contract negotiation meeting, completely tuning out all the execs and financial advisers speaking to him; studiously ignoring John kicking his chair in an attempt to get him to pay attention.

It’s really simple, in the end: he thinks about crawling into an empty bed tonight alone in his London flat. And he wonders what the hell he is doing in London at this meeting, when he could be on the Isle of Man with Phil.

“This is so stupid,” he says.

And then promptly realizes that everyone in the room is staring at him. Across from him, John is glaring daggers.

“I mean…not this job. Or you people. _I’m_ stupid. I’m the stupid one,” he tries to amend. John claps a hand over his face and looks like he wants to push Dan out the nearest office window.

“I don’t want to do the radio show next year,” Dan announces, and several pairs of eyebrows shoot up. “I want to go back to YouTube. Some personal stuff has come up in my life lately and I need time to figure it all out. I’m sorry if that puts you in a tight corner. Thanks for your time.”

Then he is standing and striding out of the room, never looking back once. John catches up to him in the hallway as he waits for the elevator.

“What the hell was that?!” John asks, face nearly purple.

“Thanks for all your help these past few years, John,” Dan says politely. “I don’t know if I’ll be needing your services anymore. I don’t really know anything yet.”

“Where the fuck are you going?” John calls as Dan turns and walks away.

 _Isle of Man,_ he wants to say. “I’m taking the stairs. Elevator’s a bit slow today, don’t you think?”

* * *

Just a few hours later, he is back on a ferry heading out to Mann, silently freaking out a little bit.

But then he gets his first Twitter notification from Phil in over three years, and it feels like a flashing neon sign from the universe and every single god out there that he is headed in the right direction.

Phil seems to have taken it upon himself to step in and address some of the madness happening on Twitter and Tumblr at the moment, but he’s only made it worse; suddenly returning from 3 years of dead silence. Dan scrolls through the endless stream of ‘oh my god this is the best day of my life!!!!!!111!!’ that is happening in his Twitter feed before finally working up the courage to read what Phil had tweeted him.

                amazingphil:

               @danisnotonfire PINOF 4 soon?

 Which is so bittersweetly perfect that it nearly steals his breath away. And as he stands on the ship and looks out over the waves as the mainland grows smaller and smaller behind him, he thinks about how Phil had known exactly what to tweet, even after all these years. How PJ had looked at him with such compassion and been so gentle when Dan had asked about Phil for the first time after the break-up. How Louise had told him that some things are worth trying to fix, even if they’re big and scary.

And he thinks that there is something very important about the fact that he’s the one quitting his job and dramatically jetting off to Mann. Because he’d been the one to leave in the first place, it’s _right_ that he comes back in the end.

He takes a deep breath.

And he tweets back.

_@amazingphil already on my way._

* * *

He thinks about going to Phil’s flat—it would be the logical place to look for Phil, after all, since he lives there and all. But something stops him at the last minute after he gets off the ferry.

In the end, his feet know exactly where to take him, because maybe _he_ has been floundering for the past week, trying to get a handle on the balance between himself and Phil, but Phil has been solid as a rock the entire time. Because maybe Phil had always known. Because maybe Phil had just been waiting for him this entire time.

* * *

“That was fast,” Phil says, biting his lip to downplay a grin when Dan crests the sandy ridge leading to the lonely little white house. Phil stands, dusting sand off his jeans and tucking a bookmark into the book he’d been reading before Dan had approached. The sun is beginning to sink below the horizon, and he can’t believe everything that has transpired between this sunset and the last.

“Yeah, well…I was already on the way when I saw your tweet. I think…I think I may have just quit my job?” Dan announces, his voice a little faint as the realization fully sinks in for the first time since he’d walked out of the BBC.

“I went to see Brandon after you left this morning,” Phil remarks, casually leaning against the door frame. “I bought the house.” His smile is radiant as he looks at the empty place where the ‘for sale’ sign had been just last night.

“That’s brilliant,” Dan says softly, stepping closer, because he has never meant any words more than he means these next ones:

“I want to try again.” A deep breath. In. Out. Like the waves. “I shouldn’t have left the first time all those years ago. And I shouldn’t have left again this morning. I’m _tired_ of wasting time and fucking things up between us, Phil; I’m so _tired_. And I’d completely understand if you didn’t want me back in your life, but I can wait, in case you ever change your mind. I’m serious, I’ll ask Brandon to find me a flat here; I’ll wait for as long as it takes—”

“Dan,” Phil says, interrupting him before he can really get rambling. “Dan, why do you think I bought this house? It’s our fresh start.”

And he makes it sound so simple, like they can just forget all the hurt; pick up where they’d left off and keep going, just like _that_ ; their two lives growing back into one, eternally waxing and waning together like the moon and the tides.

“Do you really mean that?” Dan asks, his voice no more than a whisper.

“The house is for _us,_ Dan. It was always meant to be for us, not just for me.” And Phil’s words have the sound of past and present and future all wrapped up into one, and Dan still remembers being 19 and listening to Phil spin dreams of them owning a house by the sea one day, and this isn’t how he’d ever imagined it all working out in a million years, but they’re both here now, and maybe they can still have all of that, today and tomorrow and all the days after that.

The moment is then completely ruined by something black falling from the sky. Phil grabs him and automatically yanks him away from nearly being clipped on the forehead by…a shingle from the roof.

“Er…yeah, this might be a good time to mention that the house needs a bit of fixing up? Apparently the pipes leak? And the shingles are dropping like flies.” Phil shrugs apologetically. “I almost got decapitated while I was reading earlier. Adventures in home-ownership, I guess.”

“Jesus,” Dan groans, watching in disbelief as another shingle falls with a light gust of wind. “Yes, ‘ _adventure’_ is one way to describe this, I’m sure,” he snorts derisively, but he still smiles like a complete idiot when Phil reaches out and pokes him in the dimple and says “okay, can we make out now that we’ve done the spilling-our-emotions thing?”

And then he almost cries of laughter when Phil jokingly tries to carry him over the threshold—“it’s symbolic, Dan”—and nearly puts his back out.

And then he actually _does_ cry a little bit later that night when they have an enthusiastic repeat of the previous night’s sexual activities, because he doesn’t have to leave this time, and the wind is howling outside and the beach is going to be littered with shingles the next morning, but it’s okay, because they can pick up and rebuild together.

* * *

 

_2016_

_The BBC is calling._

_Dan still works for them—he only does one radio show a month (the Monday Internet Takeover), but he still has some presenting work lined up for the coming months—awards shows, a new gaming documentary. He’s glad that they’ve been so willing to work around him suddenly uprooting himself and moving to an island, but Jesus **fuck** , do they have to call so early in the morning?_

_“Hnnnghhh,” Phil groans sleepily as Dan wrestles out of his arms to grab his obnoxiously jingling phone. It’s John, so he lets it go to voicemail—because sure enough, John has already sent him five texts explaining exactly why he is calling and exactly why Dan should answer._

_He wants Dan to send him a tentative list of the music he’ll play on the radio next week by the end of the morning, and Dan hasn’t even begun thinking about it yet. Honestly, as fun as the Internet Takeover is, the radio isn’t his highest priority at the moment._

_For now he and Phil are just trying to ease back into YouTube, to test the waters and see if they still have fans out there (they do) and if YouTube is even something they still enjoy doing (it is, far more than Dan remembers ever enjoying it before). But Phil has mentioned that he is open to the idea of eventually trying to break into radio work as well; that maybe in a few years they could move to London together and try out the Dan and Phil radio show thing that Dan had pushed so hard for back in 2012._

_"_ Do you ever think that we’re doing things backwards? _” Dan had asked Phil a few months earlier, sitting on the beach at night. “_ We’re basically living like retired people out here right now, and then we talk about settling down and spending our thirties and forties in London. It’s a bit mixed up, isn’t it?”

 _“_ I think _,” Phil had said thoughtfully in response, skipping a rock and watching it hop across the surf before it disappeared, “_ that you and I have never done a single conventional thing in our entire relationship. So why should we start now?”

_And they have plans; all sorts of plans—for collab videos, for a gaming channel, maybe even for a book or a tour someday. Phil would love living in London once he got used to it, of that Dan is certain. But for now, they also have this—quiet mornings in bed together, relearning each other’s bodies. Peaceful evenings walking along the beach, staring up at starry skies, hands intertwined. Busy afternoons restoring the house and filming vidoes; Sunday lunches with Ben and the rest of Phil’s family._

_“Why are you getting up?” Phil whines._

_“John wants to start planning for next week’s radio show,” Dan shrugs, swinging his legs over the edge of the bed._

_“That’s next week; tell him to leave you alone and let you sleep.”_

_“You are so grumpy in the morning,” Dan laughs, raising one eyebrow. “And why should I listen to you instead of John, exactly?”_

_“Because I can offer you a morning blow job, and he can’t?” Which, to be fair, is a pretty convincing argument._

_"You’re the worst,” Dan says, but he laughs and falls back into bed, allowing Phil to grab his phone, silence it, and throw it into a pile of dirty clothes across the room. “Next time I see John, I’ll tell him you hold him in high esteem,” Dan jokes, before being silenced by Phil’s lips against his own._

_“Stay,” Phil whispers against his mouth. Dan stays._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thanks for reading! you can find me on tumblr at blue-sweatshirts if you want


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